GMAEKS  ON  THE  FABLE  OF  THE  BEES, 


BY  AVILLIAM  LAAV,  M.A. 

KOR.MKRLY    FELLOW   OF    EMMANUEL    COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE, 
AUT,HOR   OF    "A    SERIOUS   CALL,"   &C.  &C. 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION, 
BY  THE  REV.  F.  D.  MAURICE,  M.A. 

lAPLAIN    OF   guy's   HOSPITAL,    PROFESSOR  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 
AND    MODERN    HISTORY    IN    KING'S    COLLEGE,    LONDON,    AND 
AUTHOR  OF    "the    KINGDOM   OF   CHRIST,"  &C.    &C. 


WITH  AN  APPENDIX,  CONTAINING 

THE  POEM  OF  THE  FABLE  OF  THE  BEES, 

MANDEVILLE'S  INTRODUCTION  AND  TREATISE 

ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  MORALITY. 


CAMBRIDGE  : 

PRINTED  AT  THE  UMVERSITy  PRESS, 

FOR   D.    &    A.    MACMILLAN, 

AND  SOLD  BY  GEORGE  BELL,  186,  FLEET  STREET,  LONDON. 
M.DCCC.XLIV.  -   (^^  ^^  V 


3r^ 


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^Tl  SZO 


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ADTEETISEMENT. 


This  little  book  is  published  in  compliance  with 
the  wishes  of  one  whose  memory  is  very  dear  to 
many,  my  friend  and  brother-in-law,  the  Kev. 
John  Sterhng.  In  a  letter  written  last  summer 
he  expressed  himself  as  follows. 

*'  I  cannot  refrain  from  sending  you  a  few 
words  to  announce  a  discovery  which  I  made 
yesterday  afternoon.  Looking  by  accident  into 
Wilham  Law's  works,  I  found,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  second  Volume,  an  answer  to  Mandeville's 
Fable  of  the  Bees.  The  first  section  is  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  philosophical  Essays  I  have 
ever  seen  in  Enghsh.  You  probably  know  him, 
as  perhaps  the  most  perfect  of  controversial 
writers,  whether  rio-ht  or  wrons;  in  his  aro^u- 
ment.  Now  this  section  has  all  the  highest 
beauty  of  his  polemical  compositions  and  a 
weight  of  pithy  right  reason,  such  as  fills  one's 
heart  with  joy.  Perhaps  you  know  the  Tract 
already.  For  myself,  I  have  never  seen,  in  our 
language,  the  elementary  grounds  of  a  rational 
ideal  philosophy,  as  opposed  to  cniplricisiii,  stated 


359709 


a 


IV  advi:rtj8Ejment. 

with  nearly  the  same  clearness,  simplicity,  and 
force.  If  you  have  not  seen  it,  I  think  I  can 
answer  for  the  pleasure  it  will  give  you;  and  it 
seems  to  me  that,  conversing  as  you  do  with 
young  men,  you  could  have  many  opportunities 
of  recommending  it  where  it  would  be  sure  to 
do  good."  He  then  speaks  of  his  wish  that  it 
should  be  reprinted,  adding  "  the  later  sections 
are  of  inferior  interest  and  value,  though  mark- 
ed with  the  same  ability." 

In  a  subsequent  letter,  he  says:  ''It  gives 
me  great  pleasure  to  knoAV  that  you  agree  with 
me  as  to  the  merit  of  that  Essav  of  Law's.  I 
also  am  quite  of  your  opinion  on  the  unfortunate 
intertangling  of  the  polemics  and  the  principles, 
and  felt  it  strongly  in  reading  the  work,  admi- 
rable as  the  cleverness  of  the  disputation  is.  As 
to  the  republication,  my  opinion  is  worth  no- 
thing ;  but  I  suppose  you  might  write  to 

and  ask  him  to  read  the  book,  and  say  whether 
he  thinks  anything  could  be  done." 

In  the  same  letter  he  suggests  that  a  vo- 
lume might  be  made  out  of  Law,  something 
similar  to  '^Coleridge's  Aids  to  Keflection," 
meaning,  I  suppose,  that  passages  might  be 
made    the    texts    for    comments,    as    passages 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


from  Leighton  and  other  writers  are  by  Cole- 
ridge ;  the  object  being  to  trace  the  outUnes  of 
a  moral  science.  Bodily  weakness  made  him 
unequal  to  such  a  task  :  on  other  grounds  I  felt 
myself  equally  incompetent  to  undertake  it.  In- 
deed, the  remark  of  a  friend,  that  Law  is  the 
most  continuous  writer  in  our  language,  each  of 
his  sentences  and  paragraphs  leading  on  naturally, 
and  as  it  were  necessarily  to  that  which  follows, 
makes  me  doubt  whether  the  experiment  of  re- 
ducing one  of  his  books  into  aphorisms,  could  be 
successful  in  any  hands. 

It  was  agreed,  however,  if  the  book  were 
republished,  that  I  should  write  an  Introduction, 
for  the  purpose  of  explaining  wherein  I  con- 
ceived its  special  worth  consisted,  and  how  far 
it  was  applicable  to  our  circumstances.  Tliis  In- 
troduction, though  written  in  the  lifetime  of  my 
brother-in-laAv.  he  never  saw.  Believino-  that 
his  admiration  of  Law  arose  from  the  delight 
which  he  felt  in  meeting  with  a  thoroughly 
devout  man,  who  recognized  moral  principles  as 
involved  in  our  human  constitution,  and  who 
boldly  appealed  to  the  Conscience  and  Reason 
of  mankind  as  witnesses  for  them,  I  have  made 
it   my   chief   object    to    defend   this   course   as 


VI  ADVERTISEMENT. 

honest,  religious  and  safe.  But  I  have  expressed 
my  own  convictions  in  my  own  way  ;  if  he 
were  considered  responsible  for  them  it  would 
greatly  disturb  my  gratification  in  being  per- 
mitted for  the  last  time  to  be  connected  in  any 
earthly  work  with  one  from  whom  I  have  re- 
ceived more  benefits,  and  to  whom  I  owe  more 
love  than  any  words  can  express. 


The  poem  of  The  Fable  of  the  Bees,  and 
so  much  of  Mandeville's  exposition  of  it  as 
seemed  necessary  to  make  Law's  "  Remarks" 
intelligible,  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix, 
p.  101. 


INTRODUCTION. 


The  Fable  of  the  Bees,  or  "  Private  Vices 
Public  Benefits,"  was  first  published  in  a  com- 
plete form  in  the  year  1714.  The  author, 
Bernard  Mandeville,  a  physician,  had  already 
written  a  Satire  upon  the  members  of  his  own 
profession,  but  he  seems  not  to  have  attracted 
much  notice  till  he  announced  himself  as  a 
moral  and  political  theorist.  In  that  charac- 
ter he  speedily  received  all  the  honours  he 
could  have  desired.  The  strange  title  of  his 
book  was  found  faithfully  to  represent  its  con- 
tents ;  he  had  to  all  appearance  arrived  at  a 
serious  conviction,  that  what  are  called  vices, 
are  as  necessary  to  the  existence  of  society 
as  what  are  called  virtues ;  the  opinion  which 
he  had  formed  he  had  courage  to  assert  and 
abihty  to  defend ;  many  must  have  become 
openly  or  covertly  its  supporters;  it  was  ar- 
raigned in  numerous  pamphlets  and  grave  dis- 
courses ;  such  men  as  Ilutcheson  and  Berkeley 
thought  that  it  needed  a  solemn  refutation ;  the 
grand  jury  of  the  County  of  Middlesex  pre- 
sented the  book  in  which  it  was  put  forth,  as 
one  which  was  dano^erous  to  Religion  and  Order. 


Vlll  MANDEVILLE  S    DOCTRINE. 

How,  it  may  be  asked,  can  a  childish  par- 
adox have  deserved  such  treatment  as  this  ? 
No  one  who  has  read  Mandeville's  work  will 
be  at  a  loss  for  a  reply.  Let  a  paradox,  which 
is  merely  the  fancy  of  an  individual  mind,  be 
defended  by  the  cleverest  arguments  in  the 
world,  and  you  may  safely  leave  it  to  be 
confuted  by  the  common  sense,  the  indiffer- 
ence, the  vis  inertice,  of  those  to  whom  it  is 
presented.  But  if  it  be  nothing  else  than  the 
setting  forth  in  a  clear  definite  proposition  of  a 
notion  upon  which  men  have  been  acting,  differ- 
ent applications  of  which  have  been  sanctioned  by 
the  practice  and  the  apologies  of  moralists,  states- 
men, and  divines,  the  case  is  greatly  changed. 
There  is  a  state  of  mind  to  be  met  with,  in 
young  men  especially,  which  refuses  to  shrink 
from  the  explicit  statement  of  a  creed  which 
has  been  received  impHcitly,  and  which  it 
seems  that  other  men  would  confess  if  they 
had  only  more  of  logical  consistency  or  prac- 
tical courage.  There  is  a  state  of  mind,  far  less 
honest  than  this,  which  disposes  men  to  look  upon 
words  as  having  no  connexion  wdth  realities, 
and  therefore  to  utter  carelessly  and  fearlessly 
whatever  notions  may  present  themselves  to 
them  as  possible  or  as  amusing.  Sober  people, 
who  in  the  midst  of  habitual  worldliness  re- 
tain  something  of  real  reverence  for  opinions 


ITS    INFLUENCE   ON    ENGLISH    SOCIETY.  IX 

which  they  have  inherited,  and  a  great  dis- 
like to  be  reminded  of  their  own  inconsisten- 
cies, are  scandahsed  by  the  discourses  which 
they  hear  from  both  these  classes,  and  long  for 
some  summary  method  of  silencing  them.  Their 
zeal  is  encouraged  by  politicians,  who  grieve 
that  their  secret  of  ruling  the  world  should  be 
divulo:ed  to  the  vulo-ar.  Earnest  men  who 
might  have  regarded  the  popular  heresy  as 
a  boyish  freak  to  frighten  aged  women,  per- 
ceive that  it  is  in  fact  a  reductio  ad  ahsurdurri 
of  many  prevalent  practices  and  dogmas,  and 
welcome  the  opportunity  of  reasserting  the 
principles  with  wliich  these  practices  and  dog- 
mas are  at  strife. 

These  considerations  are,  I  think,  quite 
sufficient  to  account  for  the  importance  which 
was  attached  to  Mandeville's  work  by  his  con- 
temporaries. He  brought  the  great  question, 
whether  the  words  "right'^  and  "wrong"  mean 
anything,  to  an  issue.  Those  who  had  a 
trembling  suspicion  that  no  answer  could  bo 
given  to  it,  wished  that  it  had  never  been 
raised.  Those  who  believed  that  there  was 
infinite  danger  in  confusion  of  mind  upon  such 
a  subject,  no  danger  in  the  subject  itself,  were 
ready  at  once  to  declare  the  reason  of  their 
faith. 

But  they  were  not  equally  successful.  Who 
would    not   have    expected    from    such  -a   man 


X  BERKELEY  S    CONFUTATION    OF    IT. 

as  Berkeley,  the  noblest  and  most  courageous 
assertion  of  moral  principles,  an  encounter  with 
the  sophist  upon  the  main  issue,  with  a  com- 
parative indifference  to  the  accidents  or  acces- 
sories of  his  arguments  ?  How  painful  it  is  to 
find  him,  in  his  Minute  Philosopher,  abandoning 
the  high  ground,  and  condescending  to  discuss 
the  important  question,  whether  on  the  whole, 
more  malt  would  be  brought  into  the  market  to 
answer  the  demands  of  drunken  or  of  sober  men^ 
But  alas  !  this  admirable  sage  had  been  tempted, 
in  his  previous  dialogue,  into  a  still  graver  sin,  of 
which  this  was  the  inevitable  consequence.  He 
had  permitted  the  worthy  farmer,  Euphranor,  to 
contend  that  the  interests  of  society  must  be 
injured  by  the  publication  of  Alciphron's  doc- 
trines, and  that  this  was  a  higher  cf»nsideration 
than  their  truth  or  their  falsehood.  He  had 
left  it  to  the  atheist  to  assert  the  godly  doc- 
trine, that  truth  is  above  all  things,  and  is,  at 
all  hazards,  to  be  spoken. 

On  quite  different  grounds  Mandeville  was 
encountered  by  Wilham  Law.  Most  English 
readers  are  familiar  with  his  name.  If  they  be- 
long to  the  religious  world,  they  will  have  read 

^  See  Minute  Philosopher,  Dialogues  1  and  2.  It  is 
one  of  the  inconveniences  of  Berkeley's  Dialogues  that  so 
many  persons  of  different  philosophical  views  are  brought 
together  under  a  common  name.  Lysicles  is  the  repre- 
sentative of  Mandeville' s  opinions. 


WILLIAM    LAW.  ll 

his  Serious  Call :  if  they  are  zealous  about 
ecclesiastical  doctrines,  they  will  probably  have 
looked  at  liis  pamphlets  upon  the  Bangor  Con- 
troversy ;  a  few  may  have  been  tempted  by 
curiosity,  or  some  higher  motive,  to  study  the 
mystical  writings  of  his  later  years.  His  most 
popular  work  bears  abundant  witness  to  the 
clearness  and  manliness  of  his  Enghsh  style, 
and  to  his  humorous  perception  of  character. 
His  argument  with  Bishop  Hoadley  shews  that 
he  had  the  powers  and  temptations  of  a  singu- 
larly able  controversialist.  His  Spirit  of  Love, 
and  his  Treatise  on  Christian  Perfection,  are  at 
least  proofs  that  he  did  not  seek  for  popular 
reputation,  and  that  he  set  before  himself  an 
object,  in  the  pursuit  of  which  all  his  charac- 
teristic infirmities  were  likely  to  manifest  them- 
selves, and  would  make  him  feel  continual  need 
of  help  from  above  to  resist  them.  The  struggle 
to  overcome  the  bitterness  of  a  polemic,  without 
sacrificing  his  zeal  for  truth,  must  have  been 
severe,  and  may  not  always  have  been  suc- 
cessful. Yet  of  all  the  persons  whom  he  must 
have  irritated,  Freethinkers,  Methodists,  Actors, 
Hanoverians — of  all  the  nonjuring  friends,  whom 
he  alienated  by  his  quietism,  no  one,  so  far  as 
I  know,  ever  expressed  a  doubt  of  his  sincerity 
and  singleness  of  purpose.  An  ample  testimony 
to  those  qualities  is  borne  by  Gibbon,  who  knew 
the  reputation  wliich   he  had  enjoyed   among 


Xll  CHARACTER    OF    HIS    ESSAY. 

persons  who  saw  him  in  the  trying  position  of 
a  domestic  chaplain  ^  A  suspicion  therefore  in 
which  Mr  Alexander  Knox  permitted  himself  to 
indulge  respecting  Law,  must  be  pronounced  un- 
charitable and  unwarrantable^. 

The  book,  which  is  here  submitted  to  the 
reader,  belongs  to  a  stage  of  his  life,  long 
previous  to  his  acquaintance  with  the  German 
Theosophist.  It  exhibits  all  his  wonted  dia- 
lectical skill,  and  is  full  of  ingenious  and  sa- 
gacious retorts  upon  his  opponent.  The  former 
merit  I  should  have  considered  a  very  insufficient 
reason  for  republishing  the  book;  the  latter  a 
positive  reason  against  it.  We  do  not  par- 
ticularly want  to  hear  Mandeville's  arguments 
refuted,  seeing  that  we  probably  have  little 
familiarity  with  them.  We  cannot  have  the 
shghtest  pleasure  in  hearing  him  abused,  seeing 
that  upon  the  whole  he  may  have  done  more 
good,  by  bringing  forth  falsehood  openly  and 
nakedly,  than  harm  by  the  ingenuity  with 
which  he  defends  it.  But  Law's  book  has 
quaUties  of  a  far  more  enduring  kind ;  qualities 

^  "In  our  family  lie  had  left  the  reputation  of  a 
worthy  and  pious  man,  who  believed  all  that  he  pro- 
fessed, and  practised  all  that  he  enjoined."  Memoirs  of 
my  Life  and  Writings,  p.  21.  Gibbon  also  exj^resses 
high  respect  for  Law  as  a  wit  and  a  scholar. 

^  See  Knox's  Remains,  Vol.  L,  Letter  to  Parken  on 
Mysticism. 


THE    MANDEVILLE    THEORY    NOT    EXTINCT.      Xlll 

which  entitle  it,  especially  the  two  first  sections 
of  it,  to  a  very  high  rank  among  works  on 
Moral  Science.  For  the  clearness  of  his  expo- 
sitions we  may  tolerate  his  skilful  satire,  since 
it  would  be  a  vain  attempt  to  separate  the  po- 
lemical part  of  the  treatise  from  the  didactic. 
No  book  which  has  any  life  in  it,  can  be  safely 
torn  apart  from  the  occasion  which  called  it 
forth ;  to  reduce  it  into  a  set  of  dry  theorems 
and  demonstrations,  is  to  destroy  its  meaning. 
And  although  Mandeville's  work  may  not  be 
much  read  in  our  day,  I  fancy  that  we  are 
sufficiently  acquainted  with  some  of  his  maxims 
and  some  of  the  current  answers  to  them,  to 
be  in  a  condition  for  estimating  the  worth  of 
a  reply,  which  strikes  at  the  root  of  the 
sopliism,  instead  of  merely  plucking  off  a  few  /', 
of  the  leaves  which  grow  upon  it.  * 

When  a  person,  who  aims  at  the  reputation 
of  being  profound,  endeavours  to  prove  that  the 
acts,  feelings,  habits,  which  are  described  by 
the  titles,  good  or  virtuous,  may  be  resolved 
at  last  into  those  which  are  called  mean,  or 
paltry,  or  base :  how  often  have  we  heard  the 
answer,  "But  what  necessity  is  there  for  this 
rigid  analysis  ?  What  is  gained  by  it  ?  Men 
do  not  consciously  act  upon  these  low  impulses. 
They  seem  to  themselves  kindly,  generous, 
benevolent.  And  while  this  is  the  case,  may 
not  we  say   that   to   all   intents   and   purposes 


XIV       ORDINARY     ANSWERS. 1.     THE    PRUDENT. 

they  are  so  ?  Why  tell  them  that  in  all  their 
acts  and  thoughts  they  are  but  seeking  their 
own  interest?  Of  course  you  make  them 
angry.  They  think  you  are  unjust ;  for  till 
you  reveal  the  fact  to  them,  it  was  to  them 
no  fact  at  all.  And  besides  provoking  them, 
you  make  them  actually  the  bad  men  you 
affirmed  them  to  be.  Do  not  probe  sores 
which  nature  has  dehcately  and  graciously 
plastered  over,  and  which  without  your  trouble- 
some interference  might  never  offend  either  the 
patient  or  the  by-standers." 

To  this  reasoning  Mandeville  would  have 
replied  :  "  You  do  in  fact  concede  to  me  all 
that  I  have  asked  for.  I  never  said  more 
than  you  have  said,  namely,  that  human  exist- 
ence is  an  useful  and  excellent  compound  of 
the  most  vulgar  ingredients.  I  did  not  disturb 
the  compound.  I  heard  people  complaining 
very  angrily  when  some  of  the  degrading  ele- 
ments came  to  light,  and  wishing  to  cast  them 
out.  I  warned  them  to  beware  of  doing  so. 
I  besought  them  not  to  meddle  with  these  parts 
of  the  mass,  lest  the  whole  should  fall  to  pieces. 
How  unreasonable  and  ungrateful  you  are,  to 
tell  me,  I  have  pushed  my  inquiries  too  far. 
You  would  not  suffer  people  to  be  quiet  in  their 
ignorance  of  their  own  state.  I  told  them  what 
it  was,  because  in  their  understanding  it  lay 
the  only  remaining  chance  of  peace." 


2.    THE    HEROIC AL.  XV 

Another  class  of  persons  take  up  the  matter 
quite  (liiferently.  They  say  :  "  High  concep- 
tions of  beauty  and  excellence,  it  is  true,  do  not 
belong  to  the  world  at  large.  They  are  the 
special  characteristics  of  the  great,  the  wise, 
the  noble.  But  it  is  by  following  these  con- 
ceptions, these  dreams,  if  you  will  call  them 
so,  that  they  become  better  than  their  brethren. 
And  their  superiority  sheds  a  light  upon  the 
whole  species.  To  them  the  herd  of  men  owe 
most  of  the  advantages  which  they  enjoy. 
See  what  you  are  doing  when  you  take  these 
thoughts  away  from  us ;  when  you  make  the 
rules  and  maxims  of  the  multitude  the  measures 
and  standards  of  all.  You  do  not  leave  men 
even  their  common  good  things,  their  loaves  and 
fishes.  The  greater  men  have  conferred  these 
upon  them,  and  by  the  help  of  those  conceptions 
which  you  suppose  proceed  from  the  same  root 
as  the  meanest  thoughts  of  the  meanest  men." 

"  I  never  denied,"  our  doctor  would  have 
rejoined,  "  the  advantage  of  these  high  notions, 
and  of  a  class  which  should  cultivate  them. 
I  have  admitted  expressly  that  society  has  need 
of  a  head  of  gold,  as  well  as  of  feet  of  clay. 
And  moreover,  I  see  the  advantage  of  per- 
suading men,  that  the  gold  is  intrinsically 
better  than  the  clay.  But  the  question  stands 
thus :  The  clay,  you  admit,  is  the  ordinary 
substance  of  humanity ;  the  gold  is  something 


XVI  3.    THE    RELIGIOUS. 

extra-liuman ;  you  only  trace  veins  of  it  in 
certain  exalted  personages.  Now,  if  I  maintain 
that  all  men  are  made  of  the  same  lump,  my 
opinion  is  at  least  as  reasonable  and  even  as 
orthodox  as  the  opposite  one.  And  supposing  I 
do  maintain  that  to  be  the  case,  I  am  bound  to 
suppose  that  the  gold,  by  some  process  or  other, 
must  have  been  wrought  out  of  the  clay.  The 
nature  of  the  process  I  have  endeavoured  to  ex- 
plain in  my  book.  I  have  shewn  how  possible 
it  is  to  get  a  conceit  of  the  superiority  of  se^ 
restraint  to  self-indulgence,  of  generosity  t^ 
meanness,  of  honesty  to  baseness,  propagated 
among  men ;  and  how  much  good  flows  from 
that  conceit.  There  is  no  dispute  between  us 
as  to  the  value  of  fine  thoughts  where  they 
exist,  but  only  as  to  the  way  in  which  they 
are  generated,  and  their  relation  to  other  parts 
of  the  scheme." 

Again,  by  a  party  most  unlike  the  one 
just  alluded  to,  it  is  often  said :  "  We  acknow- 
ledge that  human  nature  is  what  you  describe 
it  to  be,  selfish  in  its  root,  and  utterly  corrupt  in 
all  its  branches.  The  behef  in  this  corruption, 
and  in  its  universality,  is  the  starting-point  of 
religious  faith.  But  the  redeemed  and  regene- 
rate man  is  raised  out  of  the  corrupt  state 
which  is  proper  to  humanity ;  to  him  your 
descriptions  of  mankind  in  the  gross  do  not 
belong." 


LAW  S    TREATMENT    OF     IT.  XVH 

To  these  statements  also  the  reply  is  given 
already  in  the  Fable  of  the  Bees.  "  I  grant 
your  exception,"  says  Mandeville.  "To  Jews 
and  Christians,  as  such,  that  is,  to  them  in  so 
far  as  they  are  out  of  the  condition  of  ordinary 
human  beings,  my  remarks  do  not  apply.  Those 
who  are  in  some  other  state  than  my  own,  are 
beyond  the  reach  of  my  criticism.  I  merely 
speak  of  man  as  man.  I  merely  say  what  are 
the  necessary  conditions  of  society  in  his  present 
osition ;  for  he  must  be  regarded  and  governed 
accorcUng  to  the  laws  which  we  discover  by  ob- 
serving liis  actual  doings  and  feelings." 

]S^ow  the  reader,  I  think,  will  perceive  that 
the  argument  of  Law  is  diitcrent  in  kind  from 
any  of  these.  He  does  not  complain  of  any 
analysis  as  too  rigid;  he  does  not  cry  quarter 
for  Goodness.  On  the  contrary,  he  demands  a 
stricter  investigation  of  all  the  facts  to  which 
Mandeville  appeals.  And  he  asks  you  whether 
this  investigation  dues  not  prove  that  evil  is  not 
the  substantial  part  of  any  act  T\hich  is  ^cted, 
or  thought  which  is  thought  in  the  world; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  the  destructive  element 
of  it,  that  which  is  making  it  unreal  and 
false;  and  whether  the  attempt  to  shew  that 
the  real  is  the  product  of  the  unreal,  that  the 
ti'ue  is  got  by  the  mixture  of  different  counter- 
feits, is  not  the  most  monstrous  of  all  possible 
insults  to  the  reason  of  mankind.  Assuming 
h 


XVlll       RIGHT  SUBSTANTIAL WRONG   DESTRUCTIVE. 

this  ground,  Law  cannot  speak  of  those  high 
conceptions  of  goodness  and  virtue  to  which 
the  second  class  of  Mandeville's  opponents  refer, 
precisely  in  their  language.  Tliat  he  was  not 
likely  to  undervalue  such  conceptions,  his  life 
and  his  books  sufficiently  testify.  But  according 
to  the  principle  just  laid  down,  nothing  can  be 
good,  except  so  far  as  it  is  real.  If  these 
dreams  be  of  something  diiferent  from  what  man 
is,  according  to  the  will  and  purpose  of  his 
Creator,  they  must  be  bad  dreams.  And  if 
they  are  dreams  of  the  way  in  which  any 
particular  individual,  or  any  class  of  individuals, 
may  follow  a  different  standard  from  the  stand- 
ard of  humanity,  and  so  may  become  isolated 
from  their  kind,  they  ai'e  bad  dreams.  To  speak 
plainly,  if  they  are  to  be  worth  anything,  they 
must  not  be  dreams  at  all;  but  sober,  waking 
perceptions  of  that  which  is  the  true  state  of 
man,  and  of  the  methods  whereby  the  life  of 
the  perceiver  may  be  brought  into  conformity 
with  it. 

These  conclusions  of  course  would  have  been 
set  at  nought,  if  Law  had  permitted  liimself  to 
speak  of  human  depravity  in  those  terms  which 
were  common  among  the  religious  writers  of  his 
day,  and  are  still  more  common  in  ours.  There 
was  nothing,  in  his  view,  which  could  lead  him 
to  underrate  the  amount  and  aggravation  of  this 
depravity,   or   to   explain  away  the  scriptural 


IS    THERE    ANY    CERTAINTY    IN    MORALS  i       XIX 

history  of  its  entrance  into  the  world.  But  he 
was  bound  to  maintain  that  transgression  can 
never  be  a  rule ;  that  evil  must  always  be  ano- 
malous ;  that  sin  can  have  no  meaning  in  any 
human  creature,  if  there  be  not  a  right  state 
belonging  to  that  creature,  from  which  he  is 
departing ;  and  that  this  state,  so  implied  in  all 
human  acts,  must  be  the  one  which  is  meant  for 
man — the  proper  human  condition.  All  rej3roof 
and  moral  censure  imply  the  existence  of  it  ; 
all  restoration  implies  the  existence  of  it.  Deny 
that  there  is  such  a  state  belonging  to  any  man, 
and  you  say  in  effect,  that  as  to  him,  the  words 
(I  rejyroof,"  "jiichjment,''  and  "  restoration,"  are 
without  mcanino'. 

It  is  obvious  that  these  conclusions  do  not 
form  a  system  which  Law  is  setting  up  in  oppo- 
sition to  that  of  Mandeville.  The  question  between 
them  is  not  this : — Of  two  moral  theories,  which 
is  the  more  probable  one  ?  but  this :  Is  there 
anything  certain,  or,  if  certain,  to  be  ascertained, 
in  morals  at  all  ?  In  the  natural  world  there 
is  a  method  of  arriving  at  what  is.  If  you  ask 
the  things  you  see  and  handle  what  they  mean, 
not  contenting  yourself  Avitli  their  first  rude  or 
incoherent  reply,  but  tormenting  them  till  they 
have  manifestly  told  their  secret,  you  feel  that 
a  truth  has  been  made  known  to  you  upon 
which  you  may  act.  Is  it  altogether  otherwise 
in  the  reo;ion  of  human  thoui^ht  and  life  ?    Ara 

b  2 


XX  GRAND    JURY    MORALITY. 

we  there  merely  in  a  world  of  opinions  and  no- 
tions? Law  finds  that  the  words  which  men 
speak,  the  deeds  which  they  do,  the  judgments 
which  they  pronounce,  are  as  much  facts  as  any 
which  can  come  under  the  notice  of  the  physical 
philosopher.  And  he  finds  that  if  you  do  not 
satisfy  yourself  with  the  mere  shadows  which 
are  cast  from  these  words,  and  acts,  and  judg- 
ments, but  resolutely  insist  upon  their  letting 
you  know  what  is  in  them,  they  too  will  speak 
plainly  and  faithfully.  For  that  human  exist- 
ence is  not  more  a  phantom  and  a  trick,  than 
the  existence  of  the  sun  and  stars ;  and  that  it 
is  not  denied  to  a  man  to  find  out  the  real 
ground  of  that  which  is  nearest  and  dearest  to 
him,  any  more  than  of  that  which  is  distant, 
and  comparatively  indifferent. 

Experience,  I  think,  has  shewn  that  in  all 
ages  this  is  the  method,  and  the  only  method, 
of  dealing  with  sophistry.  The  Grand  Jury  of 
the  county  of  Middlesex  had,  no  doubt,  a  cer- 
tain indefinite  impression  that  religion  and  order 
are  weak,  delicate,  sensitive  plants,  most  neces- 
sary, however,  to  be  preserved  for  their  plea- 
sant odours,  or  their  cuhnary  uses,  demanding 
therefore  the  watchful  eye  of  any  functionaries 
who  are  bound  by  their  office  to  protect  the 
feeble.  To  some  such  apprehension  as  this, 
mingling  with  another,  and  much  truer,  sense 
of  the  weak  hold  which  men  in  general  have  of 


PRESCRIPTIVE    MORALITY.  XXI 

the  principles  that  are  most  needful  to  their 
existence,  nearly  all  such  interferences,  and  the 
cry  for  them  among  religious  men,  may  be 
traced.  The  conviction  communicates  itself  to 
the  more  thoughtful  and  inquiring  youths  of  the 
time.  It  is  not  their  business,  they  think,  to 
take  care  of  a  thing  which  cannot  take  care  of 
itself ;  they  want  something  to  lean  upon.  '  How 
can  these  tender  nurshngs  be  what  they  want? 
Keep  them  as  long  as  you  will  or  can  from  the 
rude  hoof  of  the  multitude,  but  do  not  pretend 
to  us  that  they  were  planted  in  the  soil  by  any 
divine  hand,  or  that  they  have  any  natural  right 
there.  We  know  what  artificial  aids  are  re- 
quired to  keep  them  from  utterly  perishing.' 
Morality  doubtless  comes  forward  less  mfor^ma 
pauperis  when  prescription  and  antiquity  are 
claimed  for  the  current  maxims  and  theories 
respecting  duty  and  obligation,  right  and  wrong. 
But  whether  the  effect  of  such  appeals  upon  the 
class  to  which  I  have  just  alluded  be  more  suc- 
cessful or  salutary,  is  very  doubtful.  What  do 
these  words,  'duty'  and  'obligation,'  'right'  and 
'  wrong,'  mean,  if  not  the  condemnation  of  some 
tendencies  and  habits  which  have  been  preva- 
lent, and  multiplying  from  generation  to  gene- 
ration ?  '  Shew  that  these  habits  are  not  at 
the  root  of  your  current  theories,  and  ancient 
maxims,  before  you  allege  their  popularity  or 
their  age.     But  if  you  like  to  abide  by  your 


XXU  THE    MORALITY    OF    IGNORANCE. 

theories,  very  well.  You  confess  that  you  want 
them  to  help  out  facts ;  we  want  the  facts  to 
tell  their  own  story.'  Again,  a  person  wishing 
to  meet  this  last  demand,  may  plunge  at  once 
into  the  whole  mass  of  facts  which  the  popular 
sophist  of  the  day  alleges ;  he  may  special 
plead  the  inferences  from  them ;  may  even  con- 
tend that  facts  enough  have  not  been  produced; 
that  the  induction  should  be  larger  ;  that  per- 
haps in  the  mighty  scheme  of  God's  universe, 
there  may  be  multitudes  yet  unknown  to  us 
which  would  aifect  the  conclusion  most  seriously; 
that  modesty,  therefore,  and  present  acquiescence 
in  that  which  we  have  received,  are  most  fit- 
ting in  us.  How  such  suggestions,  or  such  a 
prospect,  can  have  any  result,  except  to  bewilder 
the  conscience — to  make  it  utterly  doubtful  of 
all  evidence — ready,  therefore,  to  accept  the 
conclusions  of  the  evil  reasoner,  because  it  starts 
with  his  premises,  I  cannot  conceive.  Myriads 
of  new  observations  may  perhaps  open  upon  us ; 
but  how  stands  it  with  those  which  we  have 
made ;  if  all  these  lead  us  further  into  chaos, 
what  hope  that  a  universe  will  emerge  out 
of  those  which  are  reserved  for  our  descend- 
ants, or  that  we  shall  be  the  better  for  it  if  it 
do  ?  There  is  yet  one  argument  more,  which 
is  sanctioned  by  very  high  authorities — in  one 
passage  of  his  writings,  by  the  most  remarkable 
ethical  teacher  of  Law's  day.     It  is  the  argu-. 


THE    MORALITY   OF    SAFETY.  XXlll 

ment  of  Safety.  *  What  peril  may  lie  in  one 
decision  upon  these  points.  And,  that  decision 
may  be  wrong.  Is  it  not  judicious  even  with 
a  less  apparent  balance  of  probabilities  in  favour 
of  the  other,  wherein  hes  no  similar  hazard,  to 
embrace  that  ?'  '  And  so  then,'  the  person  ad- 
dressed might  answer,  'you  do  not  any  longer 
appeal  to  truth  and  conscience,  and  such  fine 
words.  You  practically  confess  that  these  mean 
very  Uttle.  You  wish  me  only  to  be  cautious  ; 
to  see  that  I  do  not  fall  into  mischief.  Thank 
you  heartily !  But  have  you  really  read  the 
first  fifty  hues  of  Lucretius,  without  discovering 
that  the  very  reward  we  propose  to  ourselves 
is  the  emancipation  from  those  terrors  by  which 
vou  would  hoodwink  us,  and  hinder  us  from 
looking  into  the  nature  of  thmgs?  I  may  run 
into  this  danger  surely,  but  what  if  the  promise 
of  all  the  past  discoveries  I  have  made  in  the 
line  you  would  keep  me  from,  is,  that  I  shall 
not  ?  Is  not  your  argument,  being  as  it  is,  a  check 
upon  thought  and  discovery,  a  new  motive  to 
push  on,  that  I  may  take  all  such  alarming 
possibilities  out  of  the  way  of  myself  and  of 
future  inquirers  ?' 

All  these  methods,  and  many  more,  had 
proved  utterly  ineffectual  with  the  Athenian 
youths  in  the  days  of  Socrates.  In  proportion 
to  the  keenness  of  their  intellects,  to  the 
vivacity  of  their  characters,  even  strange  as  it 


XXIV  SOCRATES    AND    THE    SOPHISTS. 

may  seem,  to  their  zeal  for  truth,  was  the 
danger  to  which  they  were  exposed  from  Pro- 
tagoras, Hippias  and  Prodicus.  Unless  they  could 
meet  with  one  more  able  to  sympathise  with 
their  questioning  spirit  than  these  teachers,  as 
willing  as  they  to  confront  facts,  as  little  caring 
to  magnify  opinions,  of  whatever  date  or  preva- 
lency,  to  the  disparagement  of  them,  the  Greek 
Mandevilles  must  have  gained  a  complete  vic- 
tory. The  one  competent  assailant  of  them  set 
himself  to  shew  that  those  principles  for  which 
politicians  trembled,  lest  the  wmds  of  heaven 
should  visit  their  faces  too  roughly,  were  in  fact 
the  substance  of  their  lives — those  realities  to 
lose  which,  in  the  strictest  sense,  is  to  lose  one's 
self.  Dogmas  respecting  these  principles  were 
entitled  to  reverent  attention,  but  the  moment 
they  set  themselves  up  as  substitutes  for  the  prin- 
ciples, they  become  dangerous — a  mere  paper-' 
currency  without  any  gold  to  answer  it.  Let 
the  new  teacher  then  bring  forward  his  coin,  he 
shall  not  be  stopped  from  cu^culating  it  by  being 
told  that  it  is  not  of  the  realm ;  only  let  us  see 
what  it  is,  let  us  have  the  liberty  of  testing  and 
weighing  it  also.  Straightway  some  new  and 
splendid  theory  is  produced,  with  a  great  array 
of  experiences.  No  objection  is  taken  to  the 
first,  because  it  is  not  comprehensive  enough ;  to 
the  latter,  because  it  might  be  extended  further. 
Quite  the   contrary.     There  is  one  phrase  in 


MORALITY    SUBSTANTIAL.  XXV 

the  enunciation  of  that  theory  which  has 
puzzled  Socrates ;  he  should  like  to  investigate 
it  carefully.  That  catalogue  of  important  facts 
was  too  much  for  him,  he  is  so  slow  in  his 
memory  and  perceptions  ;  if  he  might  but  search 
out  the  meaning  of  a  particular  fact  which  was 
reported,  he  should  be  much  more  competent  to 
enter  into  the  general  inquiry.  Then  begin 
those  wincino's  and  wrio^o-linfrs  of  the  hitherto 
triumphant  teacher,  longing  to  break  loose  from 
his  moorings  and  float  again  into  the  open  sea 
of  generalities,  enraged  that  his  own  consecrated 
instrument  of  lano-uao-e  should  be  wrested  from 
his  hand  and  turned  against  him,  which  are 
described  so  livingly  in  the  Platonic  dialogues. 
But  yet  we  feel  that  this  object  is  entirely  sub- 
ordinate to  a  higher  one :  not  the  self-glorying 
sophist,  but  the  confused,  almost  shipwrecked, 
but  still  earnest  or  half-earnest  disciple,  is  ever 
present  to  the  mind  of  the  sage.  The  great 
object  is  to  make  him  safe,  not  by  teUing  him 
that  in  a  matter  of  great  moment  he  may  trust 
himself  to  a  shifting  sand  of  probabilities,  but 
by  urging  him  not  to  rest  till  he  has  his  feet 
upon  the  ground,  and  stands  firmly  on  it.  'The 
universe  seems  to  you  a  mere  shadow-world,  a 
collection  of  phantoms.  Well !  but  what  arc 
you  ?  You  are  not  afraid  to  question  notions, 
systems,  traditions  ;  be  not  afraid  to  ask  your- 
self this  question :   Am  I  a  phantom  ?      Once 


XXVI  A    METHOD    FOR    ALL    TIMES. 

ask  it  boldly,  meaning  to  get  an  answer,  and 
you  are  beyond  the  sophist's  circle  ;  his  charms 
cannot  reach  you.  For  you  must  feel  yourself 
to  be  something;  and  to  be  anything,  you  must 
have  something  to  take  hold  of;  and  that  some- 
thing must  he  too.  And  so  you  find  that  there 
is  a  substance,  and  that  it  is  near  you ;  and 
all  the  argumentation  in  the  world  cannot  de- 
stroy it,  or  your  connexion  with  it.' 

Vast  as  were  the  differences  between  Athens 
in  the  age  of  Pericles,  and  England  in  the 
reign  of  George  the  First,  this  method  was 
as  applicable  to  the  one  country  and  the  one 
period  as  to  the  other.  Centuries  of  accumulated 
experience  had  not  made  it  less  necessary  that 
men  should  have  a  point  of  view  from  which 
they  might  contemplate  their  stores,  a  position 
in  which  they  should  not  be  crushed  by  them. 
To  be  born  in  an  atmosphere  of  holier  and 
purer  traditions,  was  a  reason  for  each  man  to 
enquire  more  diligently  how  they  concerned  him, 
what  he  himself  was ;  neglecting  that  enquiry 
he  forfeited  the  blessing,  corrupted  the  tra- 
ditions which  should  have  been  helps  to  save 
him  from  his  natural  idolatries,  with  those 
idolatries;  made  the  truth  which  remained  in 
them  a  witness  against  the  want  of  any  cor- 
responding truth  in  himself.  Nor  could  the 
higher  gift  of  a  revelation  from  heaven  other- 
wise affect  this  duty,  than  by  making   it  more 


ENGLAND  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     XXVll 

imperative,  seeing  that  the  very  word  revelation 
imports  the  making  known  that  which  is,  to  the 
persons  w^ho  are  the  most  interested  in  knowing 
it ;  and  seeing  that  tliis  revelation  proclaimed 
itself  to  be  a  hght  to  the  feet  and  a  lamp  to 
the  path  :  not  professing  to  supply  a  set  of 
portable  rules  or  maxims,  but  offering  to  lead 
the  humble  disciple  into  the  apprehension  of  the 
laws  and  mysteries  under  which  he  is  himself 
livino'. 

And  the  young  men  of  Great  Britain,  with 
all  their  advantages,  had  as  much  need  at  this 
time  to  be  preserved  from  utter  scepticism  re- 
specting moral  principles,  as  the  far  more  lively 
and  quick-thoughted  Greek.  Great  part  of 
the  popular  literature  of  the  time,  prose  and 
poetical,  was  simply  modal :  the  stage  had 
established  a  formal  code  of  libertinism ;  the 
statesmen  had  reduced  political  dishonesty  to  a 
system ;  the  upper  classes,  having  no  great  fear 
for  the  stability  of  property,  could  indulge  them- 
selves in  the  luxury  of  doubting  whether  there 
was  stabihty  in  anything  else.  At  such  a  time, 
serious  men  were  driven  to  enquire  what  roots 
there  were  below  the  soil,  of  which  those  who 
turned  up  its  surface  so  cleverly  and  industri- 
ously knew  nothing.  I  am  far  from  thinking 
that  the  professed  moralists  were  the  only  per- 
sons who  helped  to  obtain  for  this  question  a 
satisfactory  answer.      Some  of  the   writers   of 


XXVlll  MORALITY    ITS    GREATEST    SUBJECT. 

fiction,  by  shewing  that  there  is  another  stand- 
ard of  hfe  and  character  than  mere  decorum, 
and  that  every  act  presumes  a  person  who  does 
it,  and  who  is  himself  worthy  to  be  studied,  as 
well  as  his  acts,  may  have  helped  to  cultivate 
a  stronger  and  more  healthful  morality,  even 
though  they  were  stained  by  the  unclean  habits 
of  the  people  with  whom  they  conversed,  and 
whom  they  described.  Morality  was,  however, 
in  a  very  strict  and  peculiar  sense,  the  subject 
which,  to  good  or  bad  effect,  successfully  or  un- 
successfully, occupied  all  the  men  of  this  time. 
The  most  insignificant  compositions  of  any  age 
help  to  point  out  the  direction  of  the  most  ear- 
nest and  thoughtful.  The  second-rate  literature 
of  this  time,  including  its  pulpit  discourses,  con- 
sisted of  laudations,  most  jejune  and  soporific,  of 
the  gracefulness,  becomingness,  and  utility  of 
virtue.  We  may  be  sure,  then,  that  somewhere 
or  other  these  conventional  phrases  and  dreary 
commonplaces  were  questioned  as  to  their  mean- 
ing, and  were  actually  translated  into  letters 
and  life.  But  wherever  this  was  the  case,  men 
who  in  their  ordinary  habits  of  thinking  were 
the  most  removed  from  sympathy  with  Plato, 
fell  into  his  method  of  examinino;  the  forms  of 
expression  and  of  thought  which  the  sophist 
resorted  to,  for  the  purpose  of  shewing  how 
necessarily  the  moral  truths  he  denied  were  im- 
plied in  them. 


ENGLAND   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      XXIX 

But  the  circumstances  of  the  19th  century 
are  very  different  from  those  of  the  18th.  "We 
often  fancy  that  we  have  more  sympathy  with 
the  most  remote  ages  than  with  our  immediate 
predecessors.  And  the  want  of  sympathy  seems 
to  be  much  in  that  point  which  has  been  just 
noticed.  Moral  questions  in  a  naked  form  did 
directly  interest  the  men  of  the  last  century, 
and  do  not  at  all  in  the  same  degree  interest 
us.  Such  a  change  must  indicate  that  the  work 
which  is  appointed  for  us,  is  not  precisely  that 
wliich  was  appointed  for  them.  No  reasonable 
man  can  expect  or  wish  that  his  contemporaries 
should  listen  to  the  confutation  of  doctrines 
which  do  not  molest  them,  or  should  forsake 
the  controversies  with  which  they  are  busy. 
But  he  may  feel,  that  each  period  performing 
its  own  task  well  contributes  somethino*  to  the 
next,  and  that,  through  want  of  that  especial 
lore  which  those  who  have  gone  before  possess- 
ed, we  are  likely  to  do  our  own  work  ineffi- 
ciently and  blunderingly.  The  reasons  for  this 
belief  and  this  fear  will  be  perhaps  apparent,  if 
we  consider  more  exactly  wherein  the  difference 
to  which  I  have  alluded  consists. 

I  do  not  conceive  that  it  can  be  expressed 
with  any  truth  in  this  form,  that  moral  studies 
were  most  pursued  by  the  men  of  the  last  cen- 
tury— physical  studies  by  us.  Theirs  was  a 
time  of  great  activity  in  physical  research ;  the 


XXX         THE    PHY.SICS    OF    THE    TWO    PERIODS. 

most  important  scientific  discoveries,  as  well  as 
mechanical  inventions,  belong  to  it.  No  doubt 
the  results  of  these  discoveries  and  inventions 
have  multiplied  beyond  all  calculation;  and  this 
circumstance  may  be  significant  of  the  inward 
alteration  which  has  taken  place.  Our  fathers 
were  more  busy  in  observing  the  fixed  laws  of 
nature,  and  such  of  her  living  processes  as  can- 
not well  be  overlooked  by  one  who  takes  note 
of  her  laws ;  we  are  much  more  anxious  to 
obtain  powers  from  her  for  our  own  use.  The 
two  purposes  can  never  be  wholly  separated, 
but  there  may  be  clear  indications  which  has 
the  most  tendency  to  exalt  itself,  or  become  ex- 
clusive, in  any  given  time.  Neither  pursuit  can 
of  itself  make  men  indifferent  to  those  great 
questions  concerning  their  own  life  which  are 
ever  thrusting  themselves  before  us,  and  de- 
mianding  some  kind  of  settlement.  But  the 
direction  which  the  thoughts  of  people  follow  in 
this  department,  will  answer  to  the  direction 
which  they  follow  in  the  other.  When  the 
naturahst  is  consulting  his  mistress  about  the 
laws  and  principles  by  which  she  is  governed, 
the  moralist  will  desire  to  know  what  laws  and 
principles  govern  the  life  of  human  and  rational 
creatures.  When  the  naturalist  is  most  anxious 
concerning  the  application  of  the  energies  which 
he  finds  in  the  world  around  him,  to  the  in- 
crease of  our  strength  and  convenience,  the  hu- 


SEARCH    FOR    ACTIVE    POWERS.  XXXI 

man  student  will  be  employing  himself  about  the 
ways  in  which  men  act  upon  their  felloAY-creatures 
— about  spiritual  powers  and  influences  gene- 
rally— about  the  movements  of  society.  Those 
admirable  men  amongst  us  who  have  devoted 
themselves  to  physiological  or  chemical  investi- 
gations, appear  fully  to  understand  our  position 
in  reference  to  these,  and  the  duties  which  it 
imposes  upon  them.  They  are  not  anxious  to 
bring  back  a  cold  statical  character  into  phy- 
sics; they  do  not  demand  that  science  should 
retreat  into  corners,  and  disclaim  a  connexion 
with  the  common  toils  and  occupations  of  men. 
But  since  the  desire  to  turn  natural  ao-ents  to 
account  must  assuredly  breed  infinite  quackeries, 
and  probably  some  dark  superstitions,  they  would 
lead  men  to  see  that  the  right  employment  of 
every  such  agent  by  us  involves  a  solemn  in- 
quiry into  the  functions  and  energies  which  the 
Creator  has  assigned  it.  They  would  look  upon 
every  experiment  as  a  devout  prayer  to  Him, 
that  he  would  reveal  his  own  methods,  that  we 
may  imitate  them;  and  as  they  would  complain 
of  all  check  upon  such  experiments  as  contrary 
to  his  will,  and  a  kind  of  denial  of  man"'s  rela- 
tion to  him,  so  they  would  treat  all  dealing 
with  physical  powers  and  mysteries,  which  is  not 
grounded  upon  such  discoveries,  or  is  not  for  the 
purpose  of  leading  to  some,  as  mischievous  pro- 
fancness — a  wrong  to  man,  and  an  insult  to  God. 


XXXll  MORAL    PERILS. 

Such  I  believe  to  be  the  spirit  which  ac- 
tuates our  more  eminent  students  in  this  region; 
and  what  seems  of  all  things  most  desirable  is, 
a  like  temper  and  a  corresponding  diligence  in 
those  who  watch  over  still  more  sacred  in- 
terests. In  the  sphere  with  which  they  concern 
themselves,  there  is  no  less  imminent  danger  of 
quackeries  and  superstitions — of  men  proceeding 
without  principles,  and  not  seeking  for  any. 
There,  too,  we  are  hurried  along,  and  more 
rapidly,  by  the  necessity  of  practising  with 
powers  of  the  use  and  limits  of  which  we  com- 
prehend but  little.  With  fulminating  balls  and 
explosive  steam,  the  most  subtle  electricity,  the 
strangest  magnetism,  is  every  one  conversant 
who  lives  with  human  beings — far  more  who 
teaches  or  rules  them.  Yet  it  may  be  hoped 
that  these  powers  too  are  under  some  regula- 
tion ;  that  here  too  there  is  some  relation  between 
motions  and  impulses,  and  that  the  impulses 
themselves  can  be  traced  to  some  origin.  Men 
may  be  impatient  of  being  stopped  in  their  busi- 
ness with  the  question  whether  this  is  the  case 
or  no ;  they  may  tell  you  there  was  leisure  for 
such  thoughts  in  the  past  time,  none  now.  But, 
unfortunately,  they  are  stopped  in  their  business 
without  any  such  inquiries ;  they  have  most 
perplexing  moments  of  leisure,  which  they  do 
not  owe  to  any  troublesome  moralist.  In  their 
driving,  they  come  into  contact  with  some  ob- 


MORALS    AND    METAPHYSICS.  XXXIU 

stacle  whicli  will  not  let  thorn  advance ;  a  voice 
from  the  earth  beneath,  or  else  from  the  heaven 
above,  says  to  them,  You  can  go  no  farther  in 
this  way.  If  these  threatenings  will  not  be 
disobeyed,  is  it  of  use  to  ask  what  they  signify  ? 
If  our  movements  are  in  dano-er  of  becomincr 
mere  gyrations,  is  it  so  great  a  check  to  them, 
that  we  should  learn  what  is  the  condition  of 
their  being  progressive?  A  glance  at  some  of 
the  subjects  with  which  we  most  occupy  our- 
selves at  this  time,  either  in  the  way  of  practice 
or  of  meditation,  will  shew,  I  think,  that  the 
help  which  we  may  gain  from  an  18th-century 
teacher,  who  was  comparatively  httle  versed  in 
them,  but  who  understood  his  own  vocation 
well,  is  by  no  means  to  be  slighted. 

I.  Questi(>ns  concerning  Virtue  in  the  true 
Roman  sense  <.>f  the  word,  that  is  to  say,  con- 
cerning that  which  makes  or  constitutes  a  Man — 
concerning  J  Juty  and  Obligation,  concerning  liight 
and  Righteousness — are  clearly  distinguishable, 
and  are  always  practically  distinguished,  from 
questions  concerning  the  nature  and  hmit  of  our 
Faculties — concerning  the  relation  m  which  man 
stands  to  the  sensible  world,  concerning  his  con- 
nexion with  any  world  different  from  that.  But 
these  subjects  must  always  connect  themselves 
with  each  other;  the  chief  difference  in  the 
treatment  of  them  arising  from  the  first  or  the 
last  being  regarded  as  principal  or  as  subordinate, 
c 


XXXIV    THEIR  POSITION  TO  EACH  OTHER  CHANGED. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  relation  in  which 
they  stood  to  each  other  in  the  eighteenth  century ; 
though  it  was  owing  to  the  discussions  which 
arose  in  that  century  that  their  position  was 
changed.  Hume,  who  hke  his  contemporaries 
generally  perhaps  took  more  real  interest  in 
ethical  questions  than  in  all  others,  by  raising  the 
great  controversy  on  the  authority  of  experi- 
ence, and  the  impossibility  of  referring  to  any 
higher  one,  compelled  men's  thoughts  into  a 
more  purely  metaphysical  direction.  For  the 
greatest  moral  interests  were  at  stake  in  this 
argument.  If  nothing  be  eternal,  there  can  be 
no  eternal  right.  It  was  this  consideration, 
say  some  who  are  well  competent  to  give  an 
opinion,  which  urged  Kant  to  enter  upon  his 
enquiry  into  the  province  of  experience ;  and  his 
dehght  in  having  ascertained,  as  he  believed, 
the  existence  of  a  faculty  which  takes  cogni- 
sance of  principles,  and  does  not  merely  observe 
successive  facts,  or  draw  inferences  from  them, 
was  mainly  excited  by  the  conviction  that  he 
was  discovering  a  firm  basis  for  moral  science. 
But  his  doctrine  was  sure  to  be  reco™sed  as 
important  for  its  own  sake,  and  not  merely  for 
this  result.  Those  who  believe  that  there  is  an 
organ  in  man  for  conversing  with  the  inlinite 
have  been  occupied  with  numberless  contro- 
versies which  that  belief  suggests ;  such  as 
whether  this  organ  do  itself  contain  or  originate 


THEIR    PRACTICAL    CONNEXION.  XXXV 

that  which  it  perceives,  or  whether  its  existence 
impUes  something  pre-existing,  from  which  its 
hght  is  derived  :  a  most  deep  and  solemn  en- 
quiry indeed,  involving  issues  so  important  that 
they  may  well  make  all,  even  those  concerning 
the  nature  and  meaning  of  morality,  seem  in- 
significant. Those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  have 
rejected  Kant's  conclusion,  have  been  endeavour- 
ing to  make  a  theory  of  our  faculties,  without 
reference  to  it:  to  shew  how  it  is  possible,  by 
certain  modifications  in  the  notion  of  experience, 
to  avoid  the  startling  inferences  of  Hume ;  or 
how  we  may  take  his  premises  in  their  fullest 
extent,  and  yet  ground  some  other  conclusions 
upon  them  ;  or  how  those  conclusions  may  be 
defended ;  or  how  others  are  involved  in  them 
which  he  did  not  develope. 

Now  I  do  not  profess  to  enquire  whether, 
in  an  encyclopedic  view  of  the  sciences,  it  be  the 
more  or  less  correct  course  to  look  upon  JMeta- 
physics  as  the  genus  of  which  Ethics  are  a 
species.  But  I  cannot  help  thinking,  that  one 
who  is  studying  primarily  for  the  sake  of  his 
own  life,  will  find  it  very  advisable  to  enter 
upon  the  elder  argument  first,  even  if  the  ulti- 
mate object  which  he  proposes  to  himself  is  to 
arrive  at  satisfaction  upon  that  which  is  most 
popular  in  his  day.  It  may  be  a  great  thing 
to  know  whether  we  have  this  or  that  power; 
whether  we  have  merely  eyes  and  ears,  or  some 

c  2 


XXXVl  BEING    BEFORE    FACULTIES. 

gifts  wliicli  are  not  contained  in  these.  But  it 
is  surely  a  more  serious  thing  to  know  that  we 
are  something,  and  what  we  are.  To  be  or  not 
to  be,  is  after  all  the  question  which  is  set  be- 
fore us  in  our  cradles,  and  goes  along  with  us 
to  our  graves.  To  a  man  who  has  grappled 
with  it,  different  hints  and  discoveries  respecting 
his  faculties  will  be  much  more  intelligible. 
For  one  who  knows  that  he  is  a  responsible 
being  will  have  found  occasions  of  exercising 
his  faculties  before  he  has  ascertained  their  pre- 
cise nature  or  definition,  and  that  exercise 
will  have  taught  him  more  respecting  them 
than  all  the  speculations  in  the  world.  So  by 
degrees  he  will  learn  to  distinguish  their  kinds 
and  objects;  since  clear  conscious  acts  are  always 
distinguishable ;  through  them  the  habit  of 
distinction  is  formed ;  premature  efforts  at 
classification  stifle  it.  Nothing  is  sadder  than 
to  see  a  man  fitting  up  shelves  and  dividing 
them  by  compartments,  when  he  has  nothing 
to  put  into  them.  He  who  has  no  deep  neces- 
sity for  converse  with  the  Infinite,  will  never 
really  beheve  that  he  has  an  organ  for  such 
converse,  whatever  he  may  pretend  about  it. 
He  who  has  that  necessity,  will  recognise  the 
existence  of  this  organ  in  some  phrases  or  other. 
If  his  phrases  are  not  good,  he  will  improve 
them  as  fast  as  his  faculties  of  perception  grow, 
and  he  cannot  with  any  advantage  improve  them 


THE  SPIRITUAL  ORGAN RIGHT  AND  TRUTH.     XXXVll 

faster.  Much  debating  then  upon  this  matter 
seems  to  me  unprofitable.  Whoever  confesses 
the  existence  of  a  higher  spiritual  organ  has  a 
right,  I  think,  to  ask  his  opponents  not  to  as- 
sume a  priori  that  nothing  is  true  a  priori — 
not,  in  their  zeal  for  experience,  to  reject  the 
aid  of  experiment.  And  on  his  side  he  is  bound 
to  concede  that  there  is  the  same  prima  facie 
plausibility  in  the  Locke  notion  of  the  intel- 
lectual universe,  which  there  is  in  the  Ptolemaic 
notion  of  the  outward  universe.  If  he  ask  more 
than  this,  or  refuse  this  admission,  he  makes  it 
evident  that  he  has  not  faith  in  his  own  prin- 
ciple. 

That  other  great  question,  about  which  those 
who  believe  in  the  existence  of  this  organ  are 
divided,  whether  it  be  the  ground  of  truth,  or 
only  the  mirror  which  reflects  it — the  light,  or 
the  eye  which  dwells  in  the  light — will  also  be 
much  more  likely  to  find  a  satisfactory  deter- 
mination, if  the  question,  whether  there  is  a 
right  and  wrong,  has  been  seriously  considered 
first.  For  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  has 
ever  calmly  meditated  on  the  words,  '  llight,' 
*  Ought,'  '  Obhgation,'  without  feehng  that  the 
first,  as  much  as  the  last,  implies  the  idea  of 
reciprocal  rule  and  subjection,  of  authority  and 
obedience.  It  will  be  very  hard  to  have  ad- 
mitted this  reciprocity  in  the  one  region,  with- 
out carrying  it  into  the  other ;   practically  very 


XXXVlll  EDUCATION 

hard  indeed,  for  a  man  who  feels  that  he  is 
obeying  a  law  when  he  does  right,  to  feel  when 
he  perceives  a  truth  that  he  is  the  author  of  it. 
I  do  not  say  that  in  a  system  there  is  any 
necessary  connexion  between  these  two  ideas  ;  I 
am  certain  there  is  the  most  intimate  connexion 
between  them  when  a  man  is  working  to  satisfy 
himself  concerning  the  principles  of  his  own  life 
and  being. 

II.  But  I  have  no  notion  that  questions  of 
this  kind  will  in  this  form  have  any  interest  for 
more  than  a  very  few  of  our  countrymen;  nor 
do  I  desire  that  they  should.  In  another  form 
they  are  continually  thrusting  themselves  upon 
our  notice,  not  in  solemn  academical  discussions, 
but  in  books  for  schools,  rewards  for  good  boys, 
guides  to  mothers.  Education  may  not  be  the 
business  of  this  time  more  than  of  any  other ; 
but  we  more  feel  it  to  be  our  business,  talk  much 
more  about  it,  devise  many  more  schemes  and 
instruments  for  carrying  it  on.  In  the  invention 
and  application  of  these,  hosts  of  metaphysical 
theories  are  put  forth ;  we  find  ourselves  arrived, 
by  a  most  sudden  and  unexpected  route,  at  the 
conclusion  of  interminable  controversies;  the 
Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding,  or  the 
Critique  of  the  Pure  Reason,  are  taken  for  grant- 
ed as  a  preparation  for  hints  on  English  gram- 
mar, or  lessons  in  three  syllables.  Nor  have 
we  any  right  to  complain  that  these  writers  do 


INVOLVED    WITH    METAPHYSICS.  XXXIX 

not  wait  a  longer  time  to  ascertain  the  grounds 
of  the  opinions  which  they  assume;  for  children 
grow  very  fast ;  they  must  be  taught  in  some 
way;  and  we  know  that  they  have  been  taught 
well  by  persons  who  are  ignorant  of  all  these 
discussions.  That  which  we  would  crave  of 
our  doctors  and  doctresses  in  education  is,  not 
a  more  extensive  but  a  slenderer,  assortment 
of  metaphysical  phrases — a  greater  freedom  of 
spirit  to  act  and  teach,  without  any  reference  to 
them.  For  if  they  had  this  freedom,  if  they 
did  become  as  little  children,  that  they  might 
guide  little  children,  they  w^ould  contribute 
far  more  to  our  knowledge  of  the  growth  of 
the  human  spirit,  of  its  acts  and  processes,  of 
its  needs  and  capacities,  than  they  have  ever 
yet  received,  or  are  hkely  to  receive,  from  the 
professors  in  this  department.  But  here  lies 
the  difficulty.  To  purge  the  eye  of  the  teacher 
of  its  mists  that  it  may  not  see  falsely,  to  rid 
him  of  maxims  and  theories,  which  make  his 
observations,  and,  what  is  more  important,  his 
doings,  contradictory  and  insincere.  Of  these 
cloudy  theories,  the  most  mischievous,  it  seems 
to  me,  are  those  which  confound  the  corruption 
which  every  day  will  bring  to  light  in  the  child, 
with  the  child  itself;  as  if  the  evil  were  its 
substance,  instead  of  being  its  curse  and  its  de- 
struction. For  this  is  an  hypothesis  which  every 
ncAV   experience  appears  to  contirm,  and  wliich 


xl  NEEDS    A    MORAL    BASIS. 

mixes  itself  in  fearful  complication  with  all  exas- 
perations, pettinesses,  bitternesses,  in  the  mind  of 
the  instructor.  True,  he  denies  his  own  hypo- 
thesis every  time  he  speaks  to  his  pupil  as  to  a 
moral  creature  conscious  of  its  own  wrong  ;  his 
vocation  is  a  denial  of  it;  yet  it  becomes  more  and 
more  a  habit  of  his  mind,  it  begets  in  him  more 
and  more  listlessness  and  despair,  it  is  a  root  of 
infinite  perplexities  in  his  conduct,  which  reflect 
themselves  too  faithfully  in  the  subject  of  liis  care. 
In  very  different  measures  does  this  opinion 
operate.  It  meets  with  some  partially  successful 
counteractions.  The  humble  self-denying  parent 
or  schoolmaster  learns  to  overcome  it  in  prac- 
tice, though  the  phrases  which  express  it  may 
still  cleave  to  him;  but  that  it  is  a  serious  hin- 
derance  t«)  education,  one  which  has  affected  us, 
and  does  affect  us  all  in  a  thousand  ways,  those 
who  have  reflected  most  upon  tlie  history  of  their 
own  lives,  and  have  studied  most  affectionately  the 
histories  of  other  men,  will,  I  suspect,  be  the  least 
disposed  to  deny.  A  writer  then,  like  Law, 
who  lays  the  axe  to  the  root  of  tliis  falsehood, 
though  he  may  have  said  nothing  upon  the 
subject  of  education,  may  remove  one  of  the 
greatest  obstructions  to  the  right  study  and 
practice  of  it  among  us. 

III.  But  here  in  England,  questions  of 
metaphysics,  and  even  questions  of  education,  are 
commonly  absorbed  into  the  one  great  study  of 


POLITICS.  xli 

politics.  Of  this  study  it  is  evident  that  Law  took 
little  heed.  Mandevillc's  Treatise  was  in  the  ^ 
strictest  sense  a  political  one;  the  moral  question 
was  only  introduced  because  it  interfered  with 
the  settlement  of  his  social  scheme.  ITis  op-  \ 
poncnt  reverses  the  relation  of  the  two  subjects. 
''  Settle  the  interests  of  society  as  you  can,  these 
principles  must  be  true ;"  this  is  the  method  of 
his  answer.  If  what  I  have  said  about  the 
vocation  of  his  age  be  right,  he  shewed  a  sound 
discretion  in  reasoning  the  case  upon  this 
ground ;  Berkeley  failed  precisely  because  he 
deserted  it.  But  I  fancy  that  we  should  be  very 
indiscreet  if  in  a  similar  undertaking  we  follow- 
ed his  example.  How  the  change  has  come  to 
pass  I  do  not  enquire ;  but  I  am  satisfied  that 
any  one  calmly  comparing  the  eighty  years 
before  the  French  revolution  with  the  fifty  years 
since,  w^ill  feel  that  social  questions  force  them- 
selves upon  the  men  of  one  period  as  they  did 
not  upon  those  of  the  other,  and  refuse  to  be 
postponed  to  any,  however  important,  which 
merely  concern  individual  men.  If  this  be  the 
case,  it  must  be  unsafe  in  our  day  to  set  up 
morality  merely  as  a  check  upon  the  acts  and 
plans  of  the  politician.  The  maxim  which  Lord 
Ashley  propounded  in  the  last  session  of  par- 
liament, "  Nothing  which  is  morally  wrong  can 
be  politically  right,"  is  of  the  greatest  worth, 
and   was  especially  gratifying  in  such  a  place, 


Xlii  THE    JUST    AND    THE    POLITIC 

from  sucli  a  speaker  ;  but  the  experience  of  the 
past  does  not  encourage  us  to  hope  much  from 
it  taken  alone,  or  even  from  a  hue  of  conduct 
simply  grounded  upon  it.  The  old  Athenian 
notion  of  an  Aristides  as  the  needful  balance  to 
a  Themistocles — of  Justice  hanging  as  a  drag 
upon  the  wheels  of  Policy,  was  no  doubt  for  a 
time  useful  to  the  protection  of  the  national 
character.  But  a  nation  strong  and  growing 
feels  that  self-preservation,  self-extension,  is  a 
duty  ;  not  its  lower  instinct,  but  its  higher  con- 
science, testifies  of  it.  The  Greek  feeling,  "Man's 
intelligence  is  meant  to  rule  over  animal  force ; 
we  are  intended  to  govern  the  barbarians,"  may 
have  been  mixed  with  all  kinds  of  falsehood ; 
but  it  was  not  in  itself  false,  it  was  the  germ 
of  deepest  truth,  the  recognition  of  a  divine  and 
spiritual  order  in  the  universe.  For  morality 
to  be  regarded  as  something  in  deadly  oppo- 
sition to  this  internal  conviction,  wherein  so 
much  of  the  life  and  strength  of  the  Athenian 
people  lay,  was  surely  most  unfortunate ;  all  the 
unhappy  results  which  followed  might  have  been 
predicted  from  such  a  contradiction.  When  great 
wrongs  had  been  perpetrated, — wrongs  known 
and  felt  to  be  such, — there  would  arise  a  be- 
wildered feeling  that  they  were  inevitable ; 
another  law  than  the  one  which  grave  men 
talked  about  had  already  been  recognised  and 
acted  upon;  that  must  henceforth  be  followed. 


SOCIETY    ITSELF    JUST.  xliii 

Sopliists  would  soon  arise  to  announce  this  law, 
to  express  it  in  clear  and  rigorous  definition. 
"  Might  is  right,"  would  presently  be  felt  to  be 
the  only  true  doctrine,  the  one  which  lay  at  the 
root  of  all  state  existence ;  circumstances  might 
conceal  it  or  mochfy  it ;  but  they  were  hypo- 
crites who  pretended  that  mankind  could  be 
governed  by  any  other. 

K^ow  such  a  statement  as  this  requires  to  be 
met  directly,  not  indirectly.  Unless  you  can 
shew  that  society  itself  has  a  foundation,  that 
an  eternal  justice  is  implied  in  the  existence  of 
communion  and  government,  you  may  keep  your 
moral  principles  as  pocket-treasures,  you  may  be 
tolerated  in  the  possession  and  occasional  display 
of  them;  their  application  being  only  denied 
when  any  evil  is  to  be  committed  on  a  great 
scale,  or  when  wrong  doing  has  established  itself 
into  a  system.  To  this  o-reat  aro^ument  there- 
fore  the  Greek  sao;e  addressed  himself.  He 
felt  that  the  work  for  which  he  lived  was  not 
half  accomplished,  unless  he  could  shew  that 
righteousness  must  lie  at  the  root  of  a  human 
commonwealth — must  be  the  meaning  and  the 
substance  of  it — and  that  there  must  be  a 
method  of  bringing  into  conformity  with  it  the 
minds  of  those  who  are  rulers  or  subjects.  This 
seems  to  be  the  object  of  that  work  which  has 
been  wrongly  supposed  to  be  the  sketch  of  an 
imaginary  republic.      Plato   undoubtedly  would 


Xliv      HOW   MORALS  AND   POLITICS   ARE  RELATED. 

have  denied  it  to  be  imaginary  at  all.  He 
would  have  said,  that  it  was  the  discovery,  so 
far  as  his  light  enabled  liim,  of  the  actual  order 
of  human  society ;  that  order  which  men's  acts 
may  contradict,  but  which  the  very  contradic- 
tions help  to  manifest.  And  whatever  opinion 
we  may  form  as  to  the  success  of  his  investiga- 
tion, some  such  investigation,  aided  by  all  the 
instruments  which  we  possess  for  entering  into 
the  meaning  of  the  facts  amongst  which  we  are 
living,  must,  I  conceive,  be  the  groundwork  of 
a  political  science. 

But  the  Republic  of  Plato  is  undoubtedly 
meant  as  the  crownino-  work  of  a  series.  The 
method  which  is  followed  in  it  had  previously 
been  established  by  other  and  simpler  experi- 
ments. We  may  then  profit  greatly  in  our  political 
studies  by  a  work  like  Law's,  which  exhibits 
this  method  in  its  elementary  form,  in  reference 
to  the  first  laws  and  principles  of  morality.  The 
nature  of  this  help  will  be  more  apparent  if  we 
consider  that  there  are  three  forms  of  political 
opinion  exactly  answering  to  those  which  we 
have  spoken  of  already,  as  pretending  to  be 
substitutes  for  Mandevillc's  moral  creed,  and  as 
at  last  giving  it  a  practical  sanction. 

The  first  of  these  political  opinions  is  that  of 
the  Conservative.  Society  according  to  him  is 
a  thing  of  most  feeble  and  delicate  structure, 
which  any   shock   a  little  rougher  than  usual 


CONSERVATISM. 


xlv 


may  destroy  utterly.  To  watch  over  it,  to 
keep  it  by  any  means  together,  is  the  great 
business  of  the  statesman.  For  this  end  he 
must  resist  every  attempt  at  alteration  which  is 
suggested  by  some  meditative  man  ;  only  ac- 
knowledged abuses,  that  is  to  say,  only  those 
which  have  attracted  the  notice  of  the  multitude, 
and  have  called  forth  a  strong  popular  cry 
against  them,  are  to  be  corrected — to  be  cor- 
rected not  because  they  are  abuses,  but  because 
they  are  acknowledged,  and  because  the  peril 
of  parting  with  tlicui  appears,  upon  a  refined' 
calculation,  to  be  less  than  the  peril  of  preserv- 
ing them.  The  measure  of  peril  being  the  only 
measure  of  action,  it  becomes  of  course  indif- 
ferent whether  the  thing  denounced  be  an  abuse 
or  no  ;  whatever  is  so  considered  by  a  sufficient 
number  of  strong  people,  is  to  be  condenmed  ; 
just  as  whatever  is  not  so  considered  is  to  be 
upheld.  These  are  the  golden  maxims  of 
modern  political  wisdom,  those  which  a  vast 
majority  of  Englishmen  in  the  upper  classes 
receive  as  the  guides  of  their  thoughts  and 
conduct. 

The  Reformer,  however,  has  courage  to 
oppose  them.  To  maintain  the  present  order  of 
society,  can  never,  he  thinks,  be  the  aim  of  any 
great  or  even  of  any  honest  man.  There  is 
some  model  somewhere  after  which  it  oiiMit  to 
be  fashioned  anew.     It  may  be  found  in  some 


xlvi 


REFORMERS RELIGIOUS   MEN. 


past  age,  and  then  the  question  in  which,  be- 
gets various  strifes  and  schisms ;  or  it  may  be 
obtained  by  training  men  to  some  higher  ap- 
prehension than  they  possess  at  present  of  what 
is  noble  and  good  ;  or  it  may  be  hoped  for 
from  a  scheme  which  shall  define  with  loo-ical 
precision  the  motives  and  influences  whereby 
men  are  ordinarily  swayed — shall  make  them 
act  as  checks  upon  each  other,  and  shall  use 
them  for  the  repression  of  crime,  for  the  pro- 
duction of  harmony. 

No  !  answers  the  Religious  doctor  ;  these 
schemes  are  mere  dreams.  In  societies  of  men, 
such  as  you  suppose,  none  of  these  reforms  are 
possible.  Your  society  is  nothing  but  that  world 
which  the  Bible  declares  to  be  lying  in  w^icked- 
ness.  True,  there  is  a  divine  society  established 
among  men,  but  it  consists  of  those  who  are  ex- 
cepted out  of  the  mass.  We  belong  to  it  by 
renouncing  this  world,  and  by  proposing  to  our- 
selves a  future  one  as  the  object  of  all  our 
search  and  solicitude. 

Now,  while  I  admit  the  great  truth  which 
lies  under  each  of  these  systems,  I  must  contend 
that,  as  systems,  they  involve  the  grossest  self- 
contradiction,  and  leave  the  field  of  politics  as 
the  rightful  and  exclusive  possession  of  Mande- 
ville  and  his  school.  Of  all  things,  that  which 
is  most  hateful  to  the  Conservative  is  subjection 
to  the  opinion  and  will  of  the  multitude ;  yet 


INCONSISTENCY    OF    CONSERVATISM.  xlvii 

who  becomes  so  utterly  a  servant  to  the  multi- 
tude as  he  ?  He  denies  that  there  is  any  gift 
of  foresight  in  the  statesman ;  till  the  crowd  has 
spoken  its  word — has  uttered  its  groan — his 
business  is  to  hold  his  peace,  and  shut  his  eyes. 
Then  what  a  Destructive  he  becomes,  in  virtue 
of  this  Conservative  principle.  The  pain  which 
causes  the  abuse  to  be  acknowledged  is  intolera- 
ble ;  it  must  be  redressed  by  an  application  to 
the  spot  at  which  it  is  felt.  The  head  seems 
full  to  bursting — the  patient  cries  out  for  the 
leech  or  the  cupping-glass.  The  state  doctor 
knows  that  it  is  not  a  case  of  fulness,  but  of 
exhaustion  ;  depletion  will  at  once  weaken  the 
constitution,  and  increase  the  disorder.  Yet  he 
must  obey  ;  this  is  the  acknoivledged  abuse  ; 
with  the  unacknowledged  derangement  of 
stomach  or  Uver,  by  the  hypothesis,  he  has  no- 
thine"  to  do.  In  his  wisdom  he  avoids  takine: 
any  step,  till  the  only  steps  which  he  can  take 
are  such  as  lead,  by  a  slower  or  a  quicker  pro- 
cess, to  death. 

Is  the  Reformer  less  at  variance  with  himself? 
The  whole  system  of  society  around  him  is  cor- 
rupt and  abominable — he  stands  aloof  from  it, 
and  protests  against  it.  All,  he  complains,  is 
mere  talk  and  profession — real  doing  he  can 
find  nowhere.  "Alas!"  he  beo:ins  in  time  to 
think  with  himself,  "and  what  am  I  doinfi^  ? 
am  not  I  talking  and  professing  ;    objecting  to 


Xlviii        OF   THE  REFORMERS  AND  RELIGIOUS   MEN.  ' 

other  nien''s  labours — never  putting  my  own 
hand  to  the  plough ;  displaying  a  perfect  plat- 
form of  society — never  taking  any  honest  pains 
to  set  it  up  ?"  He  changes  his  scheme,  mixes 
with  the  actual  affairs  of  the  world,  only 
for  the  purpose  of  bringing  them  to  the  state 
he  longs  for.  But  for  this  end  he  is  reduced 
to  the  necessity  of  perpetual  compromises;  that-^ 
he  may  at  last  have  everything  according  to  his 
model  he  must  be  content,  in  the  mean  time, 
almost  to  forget  it:  till  by  a  necessary  process 
he  at  last  actually  forgets  it ;  the  vision  dies 
away,  or  fades  into  the  light  of  common  day; 
he  falls  into  the  routine  of  ordinary  plotting 
and  officiality. 

Nor  is  it  otherwise  with  the  reliirious  de-  , 
claimer  against  human  politics.  He,  too,  finds 
that  he  must  occupy  himself  with  them,  in  order 
to  fulfil  the  express  commands  of  his  Master ;  that 
he  may,  even  in  an  ordinary  way,  do  his  duty 
to  his  neighbour.  But  how  sadly  confused  his 
work  is !  What  a  sense  of  wrong  doing  accom- 
panies every  step  of  it!  He  is  dealing  with 
secular  things,  he  calls  them  so,  he  believes 
them  to  be  so.  He  knows,  in  some  way  or 
other,  that  his  mind  is  becoming  secularised — his 
conscience  less  and  less  clear.  And  what  he 
is  not  conscious  of  is  but  too  evidently  the 
fact ;  he  is  colouring  all  his  notions  of  the  un- 
seen world  with  the  mists  and  fogs  of  this. 


PRACTICAL    EFFECT    OF    THESE    SYSTEMS.         xlix 

Now  the  practical  statesman  may  incline  to 
any  one  of  these  views,  or  he  may  mingle  them 
altogether.  It  signifies  little  which  course  he 
takes;  if  there  were  nothing  better  in  his  heart 
than  these  systems  would  lead  him  to,  he  must 
adopt  the  maxim  of  the  Fable  of  the  Bees.  He 
must  say,  '  However  I  may  value  high  notions  of 
morality  myself,  as  a  politician  I  have  nothing 
to  do  with  them.  With  relio-ious  influences  I 
may  have  to  do,  because  they  may  be  useful 
as  instruments  to  me,  or  dangerous  as  obstruc- 
tions. But  I  must  use  them,  just  as  I  use  every 
bad  and  low  influence  which  acts  upon  men,  and 
I  must  always  be  careful  of  their  becoming  too 
strong,  too  pure,  lest  they  should  overpower 
me;  if  I  cannot  secure  that  they  shall  be  diluted 
with  what  is  earthly  and  evil,  I  know  that 
they  will.' 

It  is  not  certainly  to  be  assumed  that  one 
who  has  acquired  the  habit  of  looking  at  what 
is  good  as  the  substantial  part  of  everything  in 
the  region  of  individual  life,  will  be  able  at  once 
to  transfer  that  habit  to  social  hfe;  but  at  least 
he  will  find  it  a  great  shock  to  his  mind  to  re- 
cognise any  other  as  if  it  had  a  stronger  stamp 
of  morality  and  religion.  If  he  has  learnt  that 
the  disorder  in  his  own  mind  and  character  is 
itself  the  witness  to  an  order,  he  will  not  be 
easily  persuaded  that  any  amount  of  disorder, 
d 


1 


THE    REMEDY. 


in  the  relations  of  men  to  each  other,  can  bear 
an  opposite  witness.  If  he  be  convinced  that 
there  is  a  permanent  state  of  being,  which  he 
must  call  his,  as  much  when  he  is  most  at 
variance  with  it  as  when  he  is  most  in  accord- 
ance with  it,  he  will  not  be  affected  by  any 
one's  telling  him  that  there  was  a  true  state 
of  society  once,  or  that  there  may  be  a  true 
state  hereafter,  but  that  now  all  is  inco- 
herency  and  corruption.  He  may  hail  with 
hearty  joy  all  that  he  can  find  of  purity  and 
goodness  in  the  past,  he  may  feel  infinite  long- 
ino-s  for  the  blessing-s  he  believes  are  reserved 
to  man  in  the  future  ;  but  he  can  only  under- 
stand that  partial  purity  and  goodness  of  the 
past,  that  perfect  purity  and  goodness  of  the 
future,  as  the  more  distant  or  more  exact  accord- 
ance with  the  truth  of  things,  the  truth  of  which 
our  consciences  testify  as  living  and  present,^ 
which  our  words  and  acts  intimate  that  we  are 
professing  to  aim  at,  and  need  not  war  against. 
In  this  spirit  the  Jewish  prophets  of  old  spoke 
to  their  countrymen ;  they  felt  indeed  that  the 
days  on  which  they  had  fallen  were  days  of 
grievous  corruption — of  corruption  which  nothing 
but  a  tremendous  judgment,  a  day  of  the  Lord, 
could  purge  away.  But  still  they  spoke  of  the 
order  as  being  there ;  the  king,  priest,  prophet, 
were  he  ever  so  rebellious  or  false,  had  each 


EFFECTS    OF    THIS    REMEDY.  ll 

his  vocation,  and  might  fulfil  it ;  his  position 
was  not  less  desirable  than  that  of  his  fore- 
fathers, only  he  had  abused  it  more ;  the  effect 
of  any  change  would  be  to  unfold  more  thoroughly 
the  meaning  of  the  state  in  which  they  were 
then  living,  and  to  bring  those  who  received  the 
punishments  rightly  into  practical  submission  to 
it.  All  sound  Conservatism,  all  sound  Refor- 
mation, seem  to  he  in  this  method ;  Conservatism 
being  the  preservation  of  the  true  sense  and 
meaning  of  the  things  which  actually  exist ; 
Reformation  the  separating  of  it  from  its  coun- 
terfeits. And  here,  too,  seems  to  he  the  true 
rehgious  view  of  the  case,  not  in  confounding 
what  is  most  pure  and  holy  with  what  is  most 
base  under  certain  large  formulas  about  gene- 
ral corruption,  but  in  shewing  how  the  tendency 
to  evil  in  man  is  manifested  by  his  continually 
losing  sight  of  reahties,  and  substituting  vain 
shows  and  mockeries  for  them. 

The  practical  politician,  who  honestly  takes 
this  course,  would  certainly  be  obhged  to  aban- 
don many  of  his  current  maxims  ;  he  would  not 
be  able  so  easily  to  cast  in  his  lot  with  any 
one  party  of  the  state  and  to  adopt  its  theory 
of  action ;  he  would  not  be  able  to  get  so  much 
credit  with  moralists  when  he  is  out  of  office,  for 
his  bold  denunciations  of  his  opponent's  system 
as  utterly  evil  and  abominable ;  nor  so  much 
credit  with  easy  men,  when  ho  is  in  office,  for 

d  2 


lii  LO.SS    OF    PARTY    GENERALITIES. 

his  clever  defences  of  any  act  or  system,  as  the 
best  under  existing  circumstances.  He  will  feel 
that  in  each  measure  and  system  there  is  likely 
to  be  a  true  meaning,  a  real  object,  which  it  is 
very  stupid  and  very  wicked  to  cry  down  for 
any  party  purpose,  and  that  there  is  probably 
some  base  mixture  with  that  good  purpose,  or 
with  the  means  for  effecting  it,  to  which  no  cir- 
cumstances existing  or  not  existing,  no  trumpery 
generalities,  no  clever  sarcasms,  can  reconcile  the 
conscience  of  any  honest  man.  He  will  not  allow 
himself  to  join  in  cheap  declamations,  against 
the  abomination  of  our  whole  scheme  of  foreign  "' 
policy  (in  India  for  instance),  as  if  we  had  been 
from  first  to  last  mere  highwaymen.  He  will 
feel  how  easy  it  is  to  utter  phrases  of  this  kind, 
and  to  earn  the  reputation  of  setting  up  a  high 
standard  by  uttering  them.  But  what,  he  will 
ask,  comes  of  them,  except  a  just  indignation  in 
the  mind  of  every  man  who  feels  that  he  is 
aiming  to  do  right  in  that  sphere  of  labour  in 
which  he  is  told  no  man  can  do  right — an  ease 
to  the  conscience  of  every  bad  man,  who  under- 
stands that  he  is  only  following  out  maxims 
which  in  his  circumstances  are  inevitable.  There- 
fore to  act  upon  just  the  opposite  rule  to  this, 
to  assume  that  there  has  been  a  principle  blindly 
or  wrongly  followed,  even  in  the  midst  of  our 
bad  doings,  and  that  this  principle  may  be  re- 
cognised  and    applied   to   the   consideration   of 


HISTORY.  Jill 

every  specific  act,  justifying  it  if  it  be  right, 
condemning  it  if  it  be  wrong ;  this  seems  to  be 
the  honest  and  reasonable  course  for  a  man  who 
wishes  rather  to  do  good,  than  to  have  credit 
for  his  way  of  discoursing  about  it^ 

IV.  But  the  appUcation  of  this  method  to 
practice  presupposes  the  use  of  it  in  the  study 
of  history.  Who  can  estimate  the  evil  effects  of 
that  habit,  which  in  this  study  has  prevailed 
so  largely,  of  pronouncing  sentence  upon  whole 
generations  of  men,  under  the  names  of 'dark,'  or 
*  superstitious,'  or  '  barbarous,'  or  of  the  reaction 
which  follows,  when  good  is  discovered  in  them, 
and  they  begin  to  be  idolized?  Who  can  measure 

'  I  could  scarcely  avoid  thinking  of  our  Indian  policy 
when  I  made  these  remarks,  because  it  has  been  recently 
discussed  in  a  volume  which  exposes  the  wrong  method, 
of  whicli  I  have  been  speaking,  with  incomparable  clear- 
ness and  force,  but  exposes  it  still  more  effectually  by 
exliibitii)g  an  example  of  the  true  and  righteous  method 
which  is  appropriate  to  every  political  question.  I  allude 
to  Mr  Lushington's  "Little  Wars  of  a  Great  Nation," 
(Parker,  London,)  a  book  combining  a  singularly  beauti- 
ful narrative  with  the  soundest  and  manliest  political 
morality.  No  one  who  feels  the  imioortance  of  applying 
great  principles  to  passing  occurrences,  will  complain  of 
the  writer  for  devoting  gifts  so  rare,  informed  by  a  still 
rarer  zeal  for  truth  and  honesty,  to  the  wars  of  Affghan- 
istan  and  Scinde.  But  Mr  Lusliingtons  readers  will 
have  some  reason  to  find  fault  with  him,  if  he  do  not 
hereafter  endow  the  literature  of  his  country  with  some 
great  and  enduring  history. 


liv  PERPLEXITIES    RESPECTING    IT. 

the  mischief  to  his  own  mind,  of  having  been 
taught  to  speak  and  think  scornfully  of  men,  as 
mere  charlatans  and  impostors,  because  they 
did  some  wrong,  or  were  betrayed  into  self- 
glorification,  who  were  yet  full  of  earnestness 
and  hope,  and  really  desired  to  utter  and  to 
spread  truth  ?  Who  has  not  felt  a  miserable 
confusion  in  his  mind  when  this  error  has  been 
detected,  and  it  has  seemed  to  him  as  if  all 
things  or  all  men  might  be  equally  true  or 
false  ?  Who  has  not  heard  acts  and  men  con- 
demned as  utterly  wrong  and  evil,  when  he  has 
felt  nevertheless  that  there  was  something  in 
them  which  he  must  admire,  nay,  which  the 
very  persons  who  were  condemning  them  did 
admire  ?  AVho  has  not  in  consequence  been 
tempted  to  the  opinion,  that  the  higher  standard 
which  the  judge  professed  to  set  up  was  merely 
artificial,  merely  something  to  be  talked  about, 
and  not  to  be  followed  ?  Who  has  not  applied 
the  maxims  of  his  own  age,  in  determining  what 
was  right  or  wrong  in  times  gone  by,  and  who, 
when  he  has  been  convinced  of  his  injustice,  has 
not  caught  himself  yielding  to  tlie  notion,  that 
each  age  has  a  certain  standard  of  its  own,  and 
that  to  talk  of  a  right  and  a  wrong  for  all  times 
is  imposture  ?  Such  opposite  perils  lie  in  this 
study,  which  yet  of  all  seems  the  one  to  which 
this  century  is  most  called,  and  for  which  its 
better  men  have  most  gifts.    But  surely  he  who 


APPLICATION  OF  INDIVIDUAL  EXPERIENCE   TO  IT.     Iv 

has  manfully  studied  the  facts  which  directly 
concern  his  own  life,  will  be  able  to  see  his  way 
through  these  contradictions,  for  he  will  have 
encountered  them  already  in  another  sphere. 
He  has  felt  that  he  must  recognize  a  permanent 
standard  for  himself;  that  in  different  stages  of 
his  life,  different  sides  and  portions  of  it  reveal 
themselves  to  him;  that  in  each  different  stage 
of  his  life  there  are  particular  counterfeits, 
mocking  that  truth  which  he  then  is  especially 
required  to  take  liold  of;  that  if  he  yields 
to  them,  they  hide  it  from  him,  that  if  he 
resists  them,  more  of  the  truth  is  manifested  to 
him,  and  he  is  able  better  to  connect  it  with 
that  which  he  knew  before.  He  feels  also  that 
he  cannot  stop  in  his  course ;  the  child  must 
become  the  boy,  the  boy  must  become  the  man ; 
and  the  child,  the  boy,  the  man  must  each 
meet  the  temptations  of  his  own  time,  whether 
he  has  trained  himself  to  meet  them  by  a  right 
use  of  the  former  time  or  no.  He  knows  too  that 
in  each  new  period  there  is  a  stronger  light  about 
him,  as  well  as  a  thicker  darkness :  he  cannot 
deny  either  fact  for  the  sake  of  the  other,  since 
each  involves  the  other.  Let  a  man  but  bravely 
carry  this  knowledge  into  history,  (and  if  he  has 
fairly  earned  it  in  one  department  it  will  go 
with  him  to  the  other — it  will  be  part  of  the 
habit  of  his  mind,)  and  then  I  think  the  puz- 
zles he   meets   with   there  will   furnish   indeed 


Ivi  THE    PAST    AND    PRESENT. 

continual  exercise  to  his  conscience  and  reason, 
but  a  healthful,  profitable,  hopeful  exercise.  The 
words,  "  Judge  not,  that  thou  be  not  judged," 
will  be  ever  present  to  him,  as  one  of  the 
deepest  commands  ever  uttered.  And  the  more 
he  applies  this  principle,  the  more  lovingly  he 
sympathises  with  his  fellow-men,  feels  their 
temptations  to  be  his  own,  rejoices  in  the  portion 
of  light  which  has  been  vouchsafed  to  them,  won- 
ders that  they  followed  it  as  they  did,  when  he 
thinks  how  he  has  used  his  own- — the  more  will 
a  clear  and  severe  judgment  of  good  and  evil 
acts,  of  good  and  evil  principles,  form  itself  in 
his  mind,  the  less  will  he  tolerate  any  confusion 
of  right  and  wrong,  the  more  readily  will  he 
recognise  one  who  is  seeking  to  be  right  and 
true  under  whatever  difficulties,  and  turn  away 
with  disgust  from  a  mere  pretender.  This 
severity  is  not  alien  from  that  charity  ;  they 
grow  together,  they  are  of  one  substance,  they 
cannot  bear  to  be  separated. 

This  habit  of  connecting  his  own  life  with 
the  life  of  history,  must,  I  conceive,  be  of  great 
worth  to  the  practical  politician.  What  a  sad 
thing  it  is  that  the  newspapers  should  be  so 
much  a  world  of  their  own  !  that  the  great  and 
marvellous  facts  of  the  present  should  be  so 
little  seen  by  the  light  of  the  past,  and  the  past 
so  little  recognised  as  having  any  relation  to 
them ;  that  the  one  should  be  regarded  only  as 


CHURCH    HISTORY.  Ivii 

a  storehouse  of  illustrations  for  schoolboy  themes, 
or  parliamentary  harangues,  the  other  as  a 
sphere  in  which  men  are  to  live  at  hazard,  doing 
what  is  best  under  existing  circumstances.  Surely 
Roman  history,  and  Greek  history,  and  middle- 
age  history,  are  meant  to  assist  us  in  under- 
standing corn-laws  and  poor-laws.  Surely  it  is 
not  well  to  read  about  the  Servile  war,  or  the 
Peasant's  war,  without  remembering  that  the 
people  in  Italy  and  in  Germany,  nineteen  cen- 
turies ago,  and  three  centuries  ago,  were  of  the 
same  flesh  and  blood  with  those  who  crowd  our 
factories,  or  set  fire  to  our  stacks. 

But  especially,  I  think,  is  this  habit  de- 
manded of  those  who  occupy  themselves  with 
the  history  of  the  Church,  and  its  relation  to 
human  society  generally.  It  is  fearful  to  think 
what  immoral  maxims  we  have  applied  to  this 
study ;  how  we  have  dared  to  lie  for  the  sake 
of  upholding  truth  and  righteousness  ;  how  we 
have  fancied  it  was  a  duty  to  lower  and  degrade 
that  which  belongs  to  the  earth,  for  the  sake  of 
glorifying  the  kingdom  of  heaven  which  has  been 
set  up  in  the  midst  of  it  to  exalt  and  purify  it. 
And  all  this  evil,  with  the  fearful  party  notions 
which  have  generated  it,  and  been  generated 
by  it,  seems  to  spring  mainly  from  our  looking 
on  this  body  as  if  it  were  meant  to  be  some- 
thing inhuman,  or  anti-human,  instead  of  being 
meant  to  embody  the  idea  of  perfection  in  hu- 


Iviii       RELIGIOUS  REACTION  AGAINST  MORALITIES. 

manity — to  shew  forth  the  glory  which  God 
has  put  upon  it.  A  deep  consideration  of  the 
way  in  which  all  immoral  sophistry  connects 
itself  with  a  denial  of  a  moral  ground  for  man 
as  man,  and  of  the  necessity  imposed  upon 
earnest  and  religious  men,  like  Law,  who  en- 
countered sophistry,  above  all  things,  to  assert 
this  ground,  may,  I  hope,  help  to  set  us  right 
in  this  matter,  to  shew  us  why  we  have  gone  so 
far  wrong,  to  make  us  feel  the  reality  of  many 
principles  which  perhaps  we  have  been  fighting 
for  stoutly,  without  perceiving  what  bearing 
they  have  upon  practice  and  life. 

V.  But  the  moral  teaching  of  the  last  age 
was  most  effectually  displaced  by  the  rehgious 
revolution  which  took  place  at  the  close  of  it. 
That  Blair  and  the  traders  in  moral  common- 
places, should  have  fallen  before  the  Methodist 
power,  was  most  natural ;  it  may  seem  harder 
that  Berkeley  and  Butler  should  have  been  con- 
founded in  the  same  category  with  these.  But 
hard,  or  not,  the  fate  was  inevitable.  The 
thoughtful  student  had  no  more  voice  for  the 
people  than  the  fashionable  preacher.  The 
hearts  of  colliers  and  pickpockets  could  no  more 
be  reached  by  an  announcement  of  the  laws  of 
human  life  and  action,  than  by  well-turned  sen- 
tences about  decorum.  That  which  could  reach 
them  had  evidence  of  power  in  it,  which  the 
sagest  book  on  ethical  science  could  not  offer. 


RESULTS    OF    IT.  ll'x 

Thank  God  that  the  power  made  itself  felt, 
whatever  it  may  have  swept  away  in  its 
course ! 

If  the  world  be  not  made  for  scholars  and 
gentlemen,  if  it  is  worth  anything  that  the 
spiritual  existence  of  a  poor  man  should  be  re- 
cognised, if  there  be  truth  in  the  assertion  of 
moralists,  that  moral  principles  belong  to  one 
man  as  much  as  to  another,  then  we  must  re- 
joice that  the  Methodist  stood  his  ground  against 
all  the  opposition  which  he  encountered  from 
weak  men  and  strong  men,  from  bad  men  and 
good  men — from  those  who  dreaded  the  new 
influence,  because  it  disturbed  the  peace  of  a 
generation  which  was  settling  upon  its  lees,  and 
from  those  who  feared  that  superficial  temporary 
excitements  raio-ht  be  substituted  for  fixed  and 
eternal  principles. 

The  victory,  I  think,  may  be  considered 
quite  decisive,  but  the  trophies  of  it  are  not 
such  as  the  good  men  who  fought  the  battle 
wished  to  see.  They  are  to  be  found  in  the 
almost  total  disuse  of  the  moral  phrases  which 
were  current  in  respectable  books  of  the  last 
century,  and  the  introduction  and  circulation 
throughout  society  of  anotlier  set  of  phrases,  be- 
longing, as  it  is  commonly  said,  to  a  heart-religion. 
Xow  so  far  as  these  phrases  are  significant,  they 
must  be  most  precious ;  so  far  as  they  denote  the 
tone  and  direction  of  popular  feeling,  they  have 


Ix  THE    TEACHERS    WHO    PROMOTED    IT. 

a  secondary,  historical,  but  still  real,  value;  so  far 
as  they  are  a  mere  mode  of  the  day,  they  must 
in  themselves  be  pronounced  worthless,  but  very 
fearful  when  one  considers  what  feelings,  or  what 
truths,  they  ought  to  represent,  and  how  much 
of  life  must  have  died,  how  much  of  death  must 
have  lived,  before  they  can  have  lost  their 
value. 

We  are  bound  to  believe  however  that  they 
have  not  yet  lost  it  altogether.  And  lest  the 
depreciation  should  go  on  still  more  rapidly  than 
it  has  done,  w^e  are  bound  also  to  ask  how  it 
may  be  arrested.  By  consulting  the  records  of 
those  men  who  circulated  these  phrases  when 
they  fetched  the  least  in  the  market,  we 
may  perhaps  get  the  answer.  The  old  Me- 
thodist preacher  spoke  to  men  sunk  in  evil.  He 
told  them  that  they  were  so,  and  they  knew  he 
was  right.  But  he  spoke  to  them  as  sunken 
men ;  whatever  the  evil  above  them,  beneath 
them,  within  them,  might  be,  they  were  there. 
The  voice  which  spoke  to  them  told  them  they 
might  be  raised  out  of  the  mire  ;  the  promise 
was  that  they  should,  if  they  did  not  choose  to 
abide  in  it.  A  power,  they  were  told,  had  in- 
terfered on  their  behalf — a  power  which  could 
and  would  bring  them  into  a  righteous  state — 
make  them  righteous  men.  This  was  the  good 
news  which  was  declared  to  them  ;  all  strength 
from  above  was  to  lead  to  this ;   every  energy 


THEIR    MORAL    STRENGTH. 


Ixi 


of  any  kind  awakened  within  themselves  was 
to  lead  to  this.      The  Lord  of  all   was  wilhng 
to    make    them   righteous;    they    were   to   be- 
lieve in  him,  and  trust    him,  that   they    might 
become  so.      This  teaching  was  in  the  strictest 
sense  moral  teaching;    this  exhortation  was  a 
mo)xd  exhortation ;    however  little  even  great 
moralists  might  recognise  it,  or  sympathise  with 
it.      And  I  cannot  but  think  that  in  losing  the 
morality  of  the  Methodist  teachers,  we  lose  their 
power.      Unless  we  remember  that  what  a  man 
wants  is  to  be  raised  out  of  wrong,  and  to  be 
made  right,  and  that  whoever  offers  him  any 
boon  of  which  this  is  not  the  greatest  part,  does 
not  offer  him  the   thing  which  he  wants,   our 
words  must  be  feeble  indeed.  And  this  is  surely 
a  great  danger  of  our  time.  We  but  half  believe 
that  to  be  true   and  right  is  the  best  thing  of 
all ;   we  half  fancy  that  there  is  a  better  thing 
to    which    this    is    only    a    means.     With  this 
feeling  another   is  necessarily   connected.      We 
cannot  really  speak    to   men  as  if  there  were 
that  in  them  which  desired  righteousness,  which 
would  fain  rise  out  of  darkness  and  death,  if  it 
knew   the   way.     Nay,    we  hardly  think  that 
this  desire  can  be  kindled  in  any  one's  mind, 
except  by  help  of  some  secondary  stimuli,  which, 
if  we  looked  fairly  at  facts,  we  should  see  could 
have  very  little  power  indeed,  except  to  confuse 
the   conscience — a  conscience   confused  enough 


Ixii  OUR    MORAL    WEAKNESS. 

already,  and  requiring  nothing  so  much  as  to  be 
dealt  with  straightly  and  honestly.  It  seems 
as  if  we  had  forgotten  that  evil  is  a  present 
burden,  crushing  men  to  death ;  as  if  we  thought 
it  had  some  distant  prospect  of  becoming  a  bur- 
den, when  punishment  should  have  been  inflicted 
for  it.  We  do  not  seem  to  believe  that  good  is  a 
good  now,  only  that  it  may  prove  to  be  so  here- 
after, when  a  certain  amount  of  pleasure  has  been 
appended  to  it.  But  if  such  maxims  as  these  be 
adopted,  what  is  called  heart-preaching  must  be- 
come a  very  poor  trade  indeed — as  poor  as  the 
moral  preaching  of  the  times  gone  by.  For  what 
heart  is  it  that  you  speak  to  ?  Not  one  seek- 
ing in  ignorance  and  confusion  a  something  to 
embrace  that  it  may  rise  out  of  itself,  looking 
amidst  a  thousand  images  to  find  the  perfect 
object  of  love  which  it  has  need  of.  You  do 
not  believe  that  there  is  such  a  heart  as  this  in 
your  fellow-man,  otherwise  you  could  at  once 
present  the  pure  and  righteous  object  to  it.  But 
you  are  holding  converse  with  a  creature  which 
must  be  persuaded  by  certain  devices  of  rhe- 
toric, by  arguments  of  fear,  or  arguments  of 
hope,  not  to  neglect  its  own  interest — not  to  be 
lost  when  it  has  the  means  of  being  saved.  If 
indeed,  these  words,  '  lost'  and  '  saved,'  were  con- 
nected with  moral  death  and  moral  life,  with 
slavery  and  freedom,  none  might  be  better. 
But  if  they  have  lost  this  stamp,  another  of  a 


MEN    CRAVE    TO    BE    MADE    RIGHT.  Ixiii 

very  low  and  earthly  kind  becomes  gradually 
impressed  upon  them ;  they  merely  awaken  that 
selfishness  we  are  sent  to  fight  against.  The 
more  we  foster  this  selfishness,  the  more  ut- 
terly dead  becomes  the  man  whom  we  are 
to  move.  Our  words  may  be  tolerated,  because 
they  niean  nothing  to  him.  But  his  farm  and  his 
merchandize  must  be  the  real  things  in  his 
mind ;  all  his  notions  of  losing  and  saving  belong 
to  these,  and  interpret  themselves  by  these. 
Then,  because  the  case  seems  so  hopeless,  we 
must  bring  new  machinery  to  bear  upon  it. 
And  if  at  last  we  cannot  subdue  the  worldliness 
of  men  by  calling  it  forth,  we  think  we  may 
at  least  make  some  impression  upon  the  nerves 
of  women ;  in  the  dialect  of  some  popular 
preachers  the  aifections  and  the  nerves  seem 
to  be  convertible  terms. 

Yet  we  are  not  left  without  witnesses  of  the 
truth,  that  a  righteous  state,  and  deliverance 
from  an  evil  one,  is  that  which  men  long  for ; 
and  that  the  promise  of  tliis,  set  directly  before 
them,  is  more  eflficacious  than  all  arguments  ad- 
dressed to  their  self-interest.  The  temperance 
movement  in  Ireland,  and  even  in  England  and 
America,  if  we  will  but  look  fairly  at  the  liis- 
tory  of  it,  is  decisive  upon  this  point.  All  kinds 
of  evidence  have  been  produced  to  prove  how 
much  harm  comes  from  drunkenness  ;  what  are 
the  advantages  and  blessings  of  sobriety.     And 


Ixiv  EVIDENCE    THAT    THE    CLERGY 

if  the  greatest  change  in  this  kind  had  been 
wrought  in  a  sagacious  calculating  nation,  there 
might  be  some  pretence  for  the  opinion  (though, 
I  think,  a  very  poor  one)  that  besotted  men  had 
heard  this  evidence,  had  felt  the  force  of  it, 
had  weighed  it  against  the  present  temptation, 
had  deliberately  entered  upon  a  new  scheme  of 
life.  But  when  the  people  which  really  aban- 
dons its  evil  habits  is  one  proverbially  uncalcu- 
lating,  incapable  of  tracing  the  relation  between 
acts  and  their  results,  we  are  compelled,  whether 
we  will  or  no,  into  another  hypothesis,  which  is 
equally  applicable  to  both  cases.  We  must  be- 
lieve that  it  is  the  sense  of  present  degradation 
and  wrong  which  makes  the  preacher's  word 
intelligible ;  that  it  is  the  feehng  '  there  is  a 
truer  state,  and  it  is  the  one  I  am  meant  for,' 
which  makes  his  promise  of  a  divine  help  and 
deliverance  seem  most  reasonable.  A  man  fast 
bound  within  the  meshes  of  an  evil  habit,  which 
holds  him  the  faster  the  more  he  strives  to  ex- 
tricate himself,  feels  there  is  a  dignus  vindice 
nodus;  that  he  must  and  may  look  for  a  divine 
rescue.  This  faith  he  has,  and  it  is  an  honest 
and  true  one.  If  Father  Mathew,  or  any  one 
else,  do  on  any  occasion  abuse  it,  or  devise 
stratagems  to  make  it  stronger,  I  am  sure  that 
he  does  a  wicked  and  foolish  thing,  which  ulti- 
mately defeats  his  own  object.  But  to  attribute 
the  great  work  he  has  been  effecting,  whether 


NEED    TO    BE    MORAL    TEACHERS.  IxV 

it  be  permanent  or  transitory,  to  the  falsehood 
which  may  have  mingled  with  his  truth,  and  not 
to  the  truth,  seems  to  me  ridiculous  as  well  as 
wrong.      The  Irish  people,  be  it   remembered, 
are  used  to  all  the  machinery  of  religious  ter- 
rors.  Curses  from  the  altar  they  may  hear  every 
Sunday ;  the  beUef  of  a  mysterious  divine  power 
which  is  to  do  them  good,  to  raise  them  out  of 
evil,  this  they  wanted ;    and  the  effects  of  it, 
when  it  was  imparted,  are  not  greater  than  any 
one  might   expect  who  behoves  in  the  divine 
government  of  the  world.      Those  effects  must 
undoubtedly   disappear,   if  the  principle   which 
produced  them  do  not  work  also  in  other  direc- 
tions— if  the  people  are  not  led  to  seek  truth  in 
their  other  words  and  acts,  truth  in  their  inward 
parts.     But   I  am  speaking  simply  as  to  the 
nature  of  these  effects,  and  what  they  indicate 
respecting    the    object    we    should    propose    to 
ourselves,   and   which    we    should   believe  that 
all   divine   influences  are  conspiring  to  accom- 
phsh. 

A  book,  then,  which  leads  us  to  think  about 
the  foundations  of  morality  may  be  very  help- 
ful to  those  who  desire  to  cultivate  a  heart-reli- 
gion in  themselves  or  in  others;  not  by  turning 
them  away  from  their  proper  pursuit,  or  mode- 
rating their  zeal  in  it,  but  by  giving  more  clear- 
ness and  substance  to  their  thoughts,  and  by 
teaching  them  better  to  understand  the  kind  of 


Ixvi  THEY    MUST    RE    POLITICIANS    ALSO. 

beings  with  whom  they  have  to  deal.  Their 
guides  in  this  path  were,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, brought  up  in  the  moral  discipline  of  the 
last  age,  and  however  they  may  have  despised 
it,  they  profited  by  it.  Far  indeed  am  I  from 
thinking  that  this  discipline  would  be  sufficient 
for  our  wants.  The  Christian  teacher  in  this 
day  finds  feelings  stirring  about  him,  which,  in 
the  days  of  his  fathers,  were  almost  dormant. 
It  is  not  only  in  the  schools,  or  among  the  upper 
classes,  that  political  questions  have  taken  the 
place  of  purely  moral  ones.  The  labourer  or 
mechanic,  in  the  days  of  Wesley,  had  felt  that 
he  was  a  clod,  and  learnt  to  believe  that  he  was 
a  spirit;  the  poor  man  now  feels  that  he  is  in 
some  way  connected  with  a  society  which  is 
either  owning  him  as  a  member,  or  treating 
him  as  an  outcast.  The  difference  is  immense. 
Would  that  our  young  clergy  understood  it,  or 
were  in  the  way  to  understand  it !  AVould 
that  they  had  that  free  intercourse  with  then" 
poorer  countrymen,  which  would  enable  them 
to  know  what  thoughts  are  actually  awake  in 
them — what  they  are  actually  seeking  after ! 
Or  why  do  I  say,  of  our  poorer  countrymen? 
What  a  blessing  it  would  be  if  we  had  a  free, 
open  fellowship  with  any  class  ;  if  any  men  did 
not  think  themselves  bound,  in  compliment  to  us, 
to  suppress  all  the  deep  thoughts  of  their  minds, 
and  to  parade  before  us  only  what  is  most  shal- 


NEED    OF    SYMPATHY     AND    HONESTY.        Ixvii 

low  and  artificial.     What  a  hateful  privilege  it 
is  thus  to  be  cut  off  from  real  communion  with 
the  very  creatures  whom   we  are  appointed  to 
help — wdth    whose    sorrows,    conflicts,    tempta- 
tions, w^e  ought  to  have  greater  sympathy  than 
all  other   people.      What    a    dark    opinion   the 
privilege  rests  upon,  that  we  do  not  really  be- 
lieve the  things  we  speak,  and  that  it  is  very 
rude  and  wrong  to  make  us  sensible  of  our  un- 
comfortable and  insincere  position.  At  all  events, 
let  us  determine  that  this  opinion  shall  have  no 
foundation ;    let  us  shew  that  we   believe  it  is 
good  for  ourselves,  and  for  all  men,  to  be  de- 
tected in  w  hatever  is  fiilse  and  wrong,  and  not 
to  hide  it ;    that  we  know  the  falsehood  is  in 
ourselves,  and  not  in  our  position ;  that  we  feel 
that  to  be  a  perpetual  assertion  of  what  is  real 
and  substantial,  against  what  is  conventional  and 
shadowy  ;  that  in  order  to  be  true  to  it,  we  feel 
we  must  be  true  in  ourselves.    AVhich  considera- 
tion brings  us  back  to  the  same  point  as  before. 
We  must  learn  first  to  believe  that  personal  mo- 
rality is  not  a  thing  of  modes  and  accidents  ; 
then  we  shall  feel  that  social  life  is  equally  solid; 
then,  with  these  two  convictions,  w^e  may  speak 
boldly  to   the  affections  and  understandings  of 
our  countrymen  :  knowing  that  we  have  some- 
thing to  set  before  them  which  is  worth  their 
having,  and  for  which  they  will  not  find  a  sub- 
stitute elsewdicre. 

e2 


Ixviii  RELIGIOUS    EUD^MONISM. 

VI .  When  I  spoke  of  a  tendency  among  our- 
selves to  bribe  men  with  promises  of  happiness, 
or  to  terrify  them  with  threats  of  punishment, 
instead  of  recognising  at  once  a  deeper  want, 
and  a  deeper  evil,  of  which  they  are  conscious, 
or  may  become  conscious,  I  did  not  mean  that 
there  was  no  similar  weakness  in  the  last  age. 
I  have  already  noted  instances  of  it  in  two  men 
of   first-rate   wisdom  and  excellence,  Berkeley 
and  Butler,  and  though  I  cannot  discover  any 
equally  flagrant  offences  in  this  treatise  of  Law, 
I  am  far  from  saying  that  he  is  entirely  free 
from  the  habit  of  mind  which  gave  rise  to  them. 
In  many  passages  of  his  answer  to  Mandeville 
he  speaks  of  Happiness  as  the  great  end  of  all 
man's  aims  and  strivings.     Now  Happiness  in 
his  nomenclature  is  the  satisfaction  of  all  man's 
capacities   and  necessities,   the  order  and  har- 
mony of  his  being ;   in  other  words,  it  is  the 
right  state  of  a  man ;  all  jarring,  confusion,  dis- 
order, being  the  necessary  result,  or  rather  the 
exponent  of  wrong.      Such  a  view  of  happiness 
excludes  the  notion,  that  the  great  thing  which 
a  man  has  to   desire,  is  some  consequence  or 
reward  or  superadded  bliss ;  it  makes  the  right 
or  righteous  state  of  a  man,  whatever  that  may 
be,   identical  with   his   felicity.      The   dispute, 
therefore,  might  seem  to  be  one  of  words,  and 
so  in  a  sense  it  is.     But  what  need  was  there 
for    the    word?     Why  did  one   so  clear  and 


FIRST  OCCASION   OF   IT   IN   THE   LAST   AGE.       Ixix 

logical,  so  anxious  to  assert  moral  principles, 
feel  himself  oblio:ecl  to  use  a  form  of  lan2:uao:e, 
which  apparently — yes,  and  for  his  readers 
really — has  the  effect  of  substituting  some  other 
end  for  the  moral  end  ?  , 

The  question  is  a  very  important  one :  the 
answers  to  it,  1  think,  are  two.  First,  he  felt 
that  morality  to  be  good  at  all  must  be  good  for 
mankind — where  by  good  I  mean  practically 
available.  He  did  not  wish  to  exclude  any 
human  creature  from  the  benefits  which  be- 
longed to  the  race.  But  he  had  no  experience 
to  tell  him  that  men  generally  can  be  more 
affected  by  a  higher  principle  than  by  a  lower 
one :  apparently,  the  evidence  was  in  favour  of 
the  opposite  conclusion.  And  therefore  he  would 
tolerate  a  flaw  in  his  own  reasoning,  and  some- 
thing like  a  general  degradation  of  the  species, 
rather  than  seem  to  set  up  a  high  rule,  which 
only  a  few  could  acknowledge.  This,  I  think, 
is  one  apology  for  a  kind  of  language  which 
seems,  at  first  sight,  more  inconsistent  in  these 
professed  moralists  than  it  would  be  in  other 
men.  But,  if  what  I  have  said  already  be  true, 
this  defence  is  taken  away  from  us.  We  have 
no  pretext  for  looking  upon  the  poorest  and 
worst  of  our  fellow-creatures  as  more  suscep- 
tible of  influences  from  mean  or  secondary  prin- 
ciples, than  from  the  higher.  We  have  direct 
and  accumulated  evidence  to  the  contrary.     All 


IXX  THE    SECOND    OCCASION. 

appeals  to  the  people  are  testimonies  that  the 
more  you  look  upon  them  as  open  only  to  sordid 
arguments,  the  less  you  will  prevail ;  that  the 
more  you  address  them  as  human  beings,  nay,  as 
having  a  direct  relation  to  that  which  is  above 
humanity,  the  more  you  will  move  them.  Thus 
the  case  is  the  same  here  as  in  physical  science; 
each  fresh  experiment  brings  out  some  ascer- 
tained truth  into  clearer  manifestation,  and 
makes  unnecessary  some  of  the  webs  of  specu- 
lation and  fancy  which  men  have  woven  for 
themselves  about  it.  But  I  cannot  help  perceiv- 
ing another  reason,  too,  which  I  think  operated 
upon  these  great  men.  They  felt  that  moral  prin- 
ciples are  altogether  different  from  mere  rules 
and  maxims  of  conduct — that  they  are  not  ab- 
stractions at  all,  but  realities.  But  how  are 
they  to  be  realised  ?  How  establish  practically 
the  distinction  between  a  principle  and  a  rule,  a 
mere  dead  sentence  and  a  living  law  ?  The 
answer,  of  course  is,  '  Let  it  be  embodied,  let  it 
be  seen  in  life.'  But  men  whose  special  pro- 
vince it  was  to  discover  the  law  in  its  strict- 
ness and  completeness,  had  a  natural  dread  of 
determining  its  strength  by  instances  in  which  it 
only  came  out  partially  and  confusedly.  Or  it 
would  be  more  correct  to  say,  their  habit  of 
mind,  both  from  its  excellences  and  defects,  was 
unfavourable  to  personality.  Now  it  seems  very 
natural,  that  persons  labouring  under  the  diffi- 


EUD^iMONISM    OF    THIS     AGE.  Ixxi 

culty  I  have  described,  feeling  the  impotency 
of  mere  principles  in  their  naked  form — or  ra- 
ther feehng  that  in  that  form  they  were  not 
properly  speaking  principles,  living  roots  of  liv- 
ing acts — should  seek  to  make  up  for  this  de- 
ficiency by  appending  certain  promises  of  plea- 
sure or  happiness  to  these  principles,  trusting 
that  these  would  be  links  by  which  they  might 
attach  themselves  to  the  heart. 

But  the  religious  teachers  who  followed 
these  moralists  were  altogether  personal ;  they 
spoke  to  each  man  not  about  laws,  but  about 
himself:  it  was  a  personal  object  which  they 
continually  presented  to  his  affection  and  trust. 
Why  then  does  the  same  necessity  exist  for 
them  ?  The  necessity,  I  apprehend,  arises  in  this 
way.  Personality  has  its  own  corrupt  tendency, 
a  tendency  to  make  the  person  addressed  regard 
himself  as  a  centre,  and  so  look  upon  all  acts  of 
grace  and  condescension  as  done  for  his  sake. 
When  this  state  of  mind  has  reached  its  height, 
the  Being  whom  he  professes  to  trust  in  and 
adore  is  no  longer  contemplated  as  the  perfect 
Form  of  beauty  and  loveliness  which  the  heart 
craves  for,  and  by  beholding  which  it  can 
alone  be  exalted.  He  is  regarded — the  word 
must  be  spoken,  for  the  profaneness  lies  in 
the  thing,  and  not  in  the  description — simply 
as  an  Agent,  an  instrument  to  confer  cer- 
tain benefits   upon   his   creatures.      And   these 


Ixxii  THEOLOGY. 

benefits  will  be  measured  by  the  creature's 
own  notion  of  things :  it  is  not  the  benefit  of 
being  raised  up  to  see  the  perfect  standard,  and  to 
be  fashioned  after  it — for  the  standard  has  been 
lost,  the  man  has  become  his  own  standard — but 
it  is  the  getting  something  which  he  calls  Hap- 
piness, the  escape  from  something  which  he 
calls  Suffering.  I  have  no  words  to  express  my 
sense  of  the  moral  feebleness,  the  degradation 
of  the  Christian,  and  of  the  national  character, 
which  this  mode  of  contemplating  the  hopes  and 
promises  of  religion  seems  threatening  to  pro- 
duce in  us. 

If  these  opposite  causes  seem  to  have  led 
to  the  same  result,  it  is  evident  there  can  be  no 
escape  from  this  danger  into  the  moral  notions 
of  the  last  age.  But  we  may  derive  good  from 
that  aoje  if  we  learn  to  connect  their  strong: 
sense  of  a  moral  law  and  principle  with  our 
desire  to  see  everything  embodied  and  made 
personal.  It  is  from  this  union  alone,  I  believe, 
that  we  can  hope  for  a  sound  and  manly  The- 
ology. Much  has  been  said  of  late  about  the 
distinction  between  scientific  and  popular  theo- 
logy, and  the  importance  of  not  confounding 
them.  In  the  sense  in  which  these  words  are 
used,  I  have  no  doubt  the  caution  may  be  a 
valuable  one.  Men  in  general  need  not  be 
troubled  with  criticism,  and  are  not  competent 
to  understand  it.     But  if  we  follow  the  analogy 


THE   UNION   OF   PRINCIPLES   AND   PERSONALITY.    Ixxiii 

of  other  studies,  I  imagine  that  the  mere  cri- 
ticism of  facts,  of  words,  or  of  sources,  though 
it  may  be  an  important  aid  to  science,  can  never 
be  said  to  constitute  it.  A  Science  of  Mature 
must,  in  its  highest  sense,  be  a  knowledge  of  the 
Powers  and  the  Laws  of  nature,  or  of  some  meet- 
ing point  in  which  Law  and  Power  become  one. 
The  Science  of  Man  must  be  the  knowledge  of 
the  Laws  under  which  Humanity  exists,  and  of 
the  Powers  appertaining  to  it.  And  surely,  in 
Theology  the  same  must  hold  true.  It  cannot  be 
some  one  of  the  operations  leachng  to  this  knoAV- 
ledge,  but  that  whereto  they  all  lead,  which 
deserves  the  name.  But  I  cannot  believe  that 
this  knowledge  has  need  to  separate  itself  more 
widely  from  that  which  is  popular  and  belongs 
to  all.  It  seems  to  me  that  coldness  and  dry- 
ness  on  the  one  side,  confusion  and  idolatry 
on  the  other,  have  been  the  eifects  of  this  sepa- 
ration, and  that  the  sooner  it  is  terminated 
the  better.  The  notion  of  its  necessity  I  fear 
has  proceeded  from  the  feehng  that  poor  men 
want  certain  helps  and  apphances  to  make  them 
decent,  or  well-behaved,  or  good,  but  that  they 
do  not  need  the  knowledofe  of  the  hvino^  and 
true  God  ;  that  this  is  altogether  above  them  ; 
that  in  place  of  it  they  must  be  content  with  a 
religion.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  every  day 
is  confounding  this  notion ;  is  teaching  us  that 
every  man  everywhere  is  in  peril  of  atheism, 


Ixxiv 


THE    SCHOLAR    SEEKING    TRUTH. 


and  that  the  deepest  knowledge  of  all,  that 
which,  we  are  told,  is  eternal  life,  is  that  of 
which  every  man  everywhere  is  in  want.  If 
this  knowledge  be  Theology,  in  its  simplest, 
truest  sense,  and  every  part  of  theology  points 
to  this  as  explaining  its  meaning  and  its  relation 
to  every  other  part,  then  is  it  a  living  science, 
which  sustains,  connects,  crowns  all  others ;  a 
science  for  the  attainment  and  diffusion  of  which 
it  is  worth  while  to  live  and  die.  If  this  be 
theology,  the  method  of  it  must  be  living  and 
wonderful,  like  that  to  which  it  leads,  and  in 
which  it  terminates.  He  who  leads  the  heart 
and  reason  of  man  into  it,  and  gives  lowhness, 
and  courage,  and  hope  to  move  along  in  it, 
must  Himself  be  living,  and  mysterious,  and 
divine.  And  dreary,  jejune,  without  a  centre, 
without  an  end — a  system,  not  a  science — must, 
I  think,  be  all  theology  which  is  not  of  this 
kind.  Safe,  indeed,  will  it  be  from  all  popular 
sympathy ;  whether  it  is  taught  or  untaught, 
believed  or  rejected,  must  seem  to  acting  work- 
ing men  a  matter  of  profound  indifference.  But 
what  more  precious  uses  has  it  for  the  man  of 
most  earnest  study,  of  deepest  meditation?  Being 
nearer  to  the  tree,  more  within  reach  of  its 
fruits,  having  pined  more  for  them,  he  under- 
stands better  than  all  others  their  dryness, 
bitterness,  rottenness.  From  his  inmost  soul 
will  burst  again  the  "  leider  audi  Theologie" 


THE    MULTITUDE    SEEKING     LIFE.  IxXV 

of  Faust,  as  the  last  and  highest  expression  of 
sadness  and  discontent,  signifying  how  a  series 
of  profitless,  hopeless  studies,  find  in  this  their 
clhnax — how  when  this  is  reached,  the  result  of 
all  is  known  to  be  nothingness.  And  yet  when 
he  ventures  from  the  cave  to  the  market-place, 
he  may  almost  persuade  himself  that  the  wares 
which  are  exposed  there  have  even  less  of  sub- 
stance than  that  raw  material  of  them  which  he 
has  examined  in  his  solitude.  For  there  the 
abstractions  which  had  presented  themselves  to 
him  as  naked  skeletons  are  painted  and  dressed 
out,  the  hollow  sockets  filled  with  eye-balls,  the 
shapes  made  to  move  by  some  impulse  not  their 
own,  a  semblance  of  sense,  even  of  speech, 
given  to  them,  multitudes  ready  to  fall  down 
and  worship  them.  A  sad  alternative  if  he 
must  indeed  choose  between  acknowledged  death 
and  the  counterfeits  of  life !  A  profitable  com- 
parison if  it  leads  him  to  reflect  that  what  is 
demanded  here  is  demanded  also  there ;  that 
what  he  was  hungering  and  thirsting  to  find, 
amidst  the  dry  bones  of  theological  systems,  was 
Righteousness,  the  Absolute  Truth — that  wliich 
actually  is ;  that  what  men  are  hungering  and 
thirsting  after,  amidst  these  idols,  is  still  Right- 
eousness :  only  they  can  teach  him  that  tliis 
Perfect  Righteousness  is  worth  nothing,  is  no- 
thing, unless  it  dwell  in  a  Living  Being,  to  whom 
they  are  related ;  he  can  teach  them  that  this 


Ixxvi 


SEARCH     FOR    UNITY. 


Being  loses  that  very  perfection,  which  their 
hearts  seek  for,  when  they  form  him  after  their 
image,  instead  of  behoving  that  they  are  formed 
after  His.  And  thus,  in  discovering  the  needful 
reconciliation  between  what  is  popular  and  what 
is  scientific,  he  realises  the  necessary  and  eter- 
nal connexion  between  moral  science  and  theo- 
logical science,  as  well  as  between  moral  practice 
and  the  idea  of  a  Perfect  Being ;  he  feels  how 
each  is  destroyed  by  the  effort  to  put  them 
asunder. 

VII.  I  admit,  however,  that  there  is  another 
idea  in  some  sense  higher  than  this,  which,  in 
this  day  especially,  will  be  continually  presenting 
itself  to  us.  In  all  directions  we  shall  find  men 
searching  after  unity,  endeavouring  to  connect 
all  the  objects  of  their  thoughts  and  feelings 
together,  to  fuse  the  different  elements  of  so- 
ciety into  one,  to  establish  a  harmony  in  the 
sciences,  to  exhibit  all  schemes  and  systems  of 
religion  as  portions  of  a  great  whole  or  as  indi- 
cations of  a  wish  to  form  one.  No  one  can  hold 
much  converse  with  his  fellow-men  without  per- 
ceiving that  this  tendency  is  at  work  in  one  di- 
rection as  much  as  in  another.  No  one  can  know 
himself  without  being  aware  that  it  is  at  work 
in  him — I  think,  without  feehng  that  he  would 
be  wrong  to  stifle  it.  But  no  one  also  can  help 
seeing  that  in  pursuit  of  this  object  men  are 
disposed  to  obliterate  all  distinctions — to  make 


ITS  CONNEXION   WITH  RIGHTEOUSNESS.      IxXvii 

a  desert,  and  call  it  peace — to  combine  all  dis- 
cords, and  call  them  harmony — to  establish  a 
unity  in  which  there  shall  be  no  centre.  Now 
the  protection  from  these  perils  is  in  our  laying 
a  firm  moral  foundation,  before  we  enter  upon 
this  question  of  unity ;  in  our  recognising  the 
eternal  opposition  of  right  and  wrong  as  a  start- 
ing point ;  in  our  confessing  a  Righteous  Being 
as  the  ground  of  our  life,  and  the  object  of  our 
hopes.  Then  the  idea  of  unity  will  gradually 
unfold  itself  in  a  form  which  will  be  satisfactory 
to  the  reason,  without  insulting  the  conscience 
and  moral  feelino-s.  Theoloo-y  will  feel  that  it  is 
capable  of  meeting  this  class  of  our  wants  and 
feelings,  that  it  can  reveal  the  true  idea  of  unity, 
and  that  this  idea  connects  itself  with  all  human 
relationships — interprets  them,  glorifies  them. 

In  the  assurance  that  it  is  his  vocation  thus  to 
come  into  contact  with  all  that  is  most  real  and 
practical,  that  a  revelation  from  Heaven  proves 
itself  by  the  light  it  throws  upon  the  earth,  the 
theological  student  will  tremble  while  he  reflects 
how  much  confusion  he  may  be  the  means  of 
introducing  into  other  studies,  and  into  human 
life.  In  the  notion  which  has  formally  received 
the  sanction  of  some  great  names,  and  which 
has  secretly  incorporated  itself  with  much  of  our 
popular  divinity,  that  the  words  which  express 
characteristics  of  the  Divine  Being  may  possibly 
have  an  altojxether  different  sio:niflcation  in  that 


IxXViii     HOW  THEOLOGY  MAY  DESTROY  MORALITY, 

application  from  the  one  wliich  they  bear  when 
they  are  used  respecting  human  agents,  he  will 
discover  a  root  out  of  which  all  uncertainties 
and  contradictions  in  every  region  of  thought 
may  naturally  develop  themselves.  How  plau- 
sible the  opinion  is — how  readily  it  commends 
itself  to  the  heart  which  does  not  like  to  retain 
God  in  its  knowledge,  and  is  glad  to  substitute 
for  Him,  even  to  its  own  bitter  cost,  a  power 
utterly  arbitrary,  imposing  rules  which  have  no 
counterpart  in  itself,  making  Right,  not  being 
Right — how  hard  it  is  to  shake  oif  the  dreadful 
vision,  when  once  it  has  been  contemplated,  and 
to  rise  into  the  confession  of  One  whom  we  may 
call  our  Father,  describing  by  that  name  a  real, 
not  an  imaginary  relation — he  will  know  too 
well,  from  his  own  history,  and  from  the  history 
of  the  world.  But  the  necessity  of  the  eman- 
cipation he  will  equally  have  learnt  from  both, 
as  well  as  the  impossibihty  of  morahty,  on  the 
other  hypothesis,  being  anything  but  a  dream — 
the  assertion  that  we  are  made  in  the  image  of 
God  a  monstrous  fiction.  Once  sanction  the 
doctrine  that  there  is,  or  can  be,  a  diversity  in 
kind  between  the  mercy  and  justice  of  the  per- 
fectly Merciful  and  Just,  and  the  mercy  and  jus- 
tice which  He  begets  in  his  creatures,  and  these 
words  become  mere  counters,  upon  which  we 
may  put  any  value,  or  traffic  with  in  any  way 
we  please.     It  is  idle,  then,  to  seek  for  any  re- 


OR    BE    ITS    SAFE    FOUNDATION.  Ixxix 

latlon  between  social  acts  or  principles  and  In- 
dividual acts  or  principles ;  all  the  anomalies  of 
the  world  easily  assume  the  character  of  laws ; 
the  theory  that  Private  Vices  are  Public  Benefits, 
may  be  just  as  sound  and  rational  as  any  other. 
Determine,  on  the  contrary,  to  maintain  that 
He  is  light,  and  in  Him  is  no  darkness  at  all, 
and  that  the  pure  essential  hght  is  the  source 
of  every  ray  of  it  which  has  ever  cheered  the 
universe,  and  the  fancy  that  any  of  the  lower 
forms  which  refract  it  can  change  its  nature,  is 
rejected  as  simply  impossible.  There  cannot  be 
so  deep  a  conviction  in  the  mind  of  any  man, 
that  the  same  law  rules  the  motions  of  the  pla- 
nets, and  the  flight  of  an  insect,  as  there  must 
be  that  the  Eternal  Righteousness  and  Law 
which  dwell  in  the  heart  of  the  Creator,  do 
alone  hold  human  society  together,  and  declare 
what  at  every  moment  of  his  life  each  of  us  is 
meant  to  be. 

I  may  seem  to  have  wandered  very  far  from 
the  book  which  has  given  occasion  to  these  re- 
marks ;  but  I  have  never  consciously  forgotten 
it,  or  my  purpose,  which  was  to  shew  that  the 
subject,  and  the  principle  of  it,  very  greatly 
concern  us,  whatever  bo  the  course  of  thought 
to  which  we  have  devoted  ourselves.  I  now 
leave  the  reader  to  a  wiser  Guide. 


EEMAEKS  UPON  A  BOOK  ENTITLED 
THE  FABLE  OF  THE  BEES. 


Sir, 

I  HAVE  read  your  several  compositions  in 
favour  of  the  vices  and  corruptions  of  mankind, 
and  hope  I  need  make  no  apology  for  pre- 
sumino"  to  offer  a  word  or  two  on  the  side  of 
virtue  and  religion. 

I  shall  spend  no  time  in  preface,  or  general 
reflections,  but  proceed  directly  to  the  examina- 
tion of  such  passages  as  expose  moral  virtue 
as  a  fraud  and  imposition,  and  render  all  pre- 
tences to  it  as  odious  and  contemptible. 

Though  I  direct  myself  to  you,  I  hope  it 
will  be  no  offence  if  I  sometimes  speak  as  if  I 
was  speaking  to  a  Christian,  or  shew  some  ways 
of  thinkmg  that  may  be  owing  to  that  kind  of 
worship  which  is  professed  amongst  us.  Ways 
of  thmkino-  derived  from  revealed  religion  are 
much  more  suitable  to  our  low  capacities,  than 
any  arrogant  pretences  to  be  wise  by  our  own 
lio^ht. 

Moral  virtue,  however  disregarded  in  prac- 
tice,  has    hitherto    had    a    speculative    esteem 
amongst  men  ;  her  praises  have  been  celebrated 
1 


remaeks  ox  the 


by  authors  of  all  kinds,  as  the  confessed  beauty, 
ornament,  and  perfection  of  human  nature. 

On  the  contrary,  immorality  has  been 
looked  upon  as  the  greatest  reproach  and  tor- 
ment of  mankind  ;  no  satire  has  been  thought 
severe  enough  upon  its  natural  baseness  and 
deformity,  nor  any  wit  able  to  express  the  evils 
it  occasions  in  private  life  and  public  societies. 

Your  goodness  would  not  suffer  you  to  see 
this  part  of  Christendom  deluded  with  such  false 
notions,  of  I  know  not  what  excellence  in  virtue, 
or  evil  in  vice  ;  but  obliged  you  immediately  to 
compose  a  system  (as  you  call  it)  wherein  you 
do  these  three  things. 

1st.  You  consider  man  inerely  as  an 
animal,  having,  like  other  animals,  nothing  to 
do  but  to  follow  his  appetites. 

2dly.  You  consider  man  as  cheated  and 
flattered  out  of  his  natural  state  by  the  craft 
of  moralists,  and  pretend  to  be  very  sure  that 
the  moral  virtues  are  the  political  offspring 
which  flattery  begot  upon  p)ride. 

So  that  man  and  morality  are  here  both 
destroyed  together ;  man  is  declared  to  be  only 
an  animal  and  morality  an  imposture. 

According  to  this  doctrine,  to  say  that  a 
man  is  cUshonest,  is  making  him  just  such  a 
criminal  as  a  horse  that  does  not  dance. 

But  this  is  not  all,  for  you  dare  further 
affirm    in   praise  of  immorality,   that  evil,  as 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEE3. 


luell  moral  as  natural,  is  the  solid  basis,  the 
life  and  support  of  all  trades  and  emj^loyments 
luithout  exception;  that  there  we  must  look  for 
the  true  origin  of  all  arts  and  sciences  ;  and 
that  the  moment  evil  ceases,  the  society  must 
he  spoiled,  if  not  dissolved^. 

These  are  the  principal  doctrines  which  with 
more  than  fanatic  zeal  you  recommend  to  your 
readers  ;  and  if  lewd  stories,  profane  observa- 
tions, loose  jests,  and  haughty  assertions,  might 
pass  for  arguments,  few  people  would  be  able 
to  dispute  with  you. 

I  shall  begin  with  your  definition  of  man. 
As  for  my  part,  say  you,  without  any  compli- 
ment to  the  courteous  reader,  or  myself,  I  be- 
lieve^ man  {besides  skin,  flesh,  bones,  ^c.  that 
are  obvious  to  the  eye)  to  be  a  coinpound  of 
various  passions,  that  all  of  them  as  they  are 
provoked,  and  come  uj)permost,  govern  him  by 
turns,  whether  he  ivill  or  ow  ~. 

Surely  this  definition  is  too  general,  because 
it  seems  to  suit  a  ivolf,  or  a  bear,  as  exactly  as 
yourself,  or  a  Grecian  philosoplier. 

You  say,  you  believe  man  to  be,  &c.  Now 
I  cannot  understand  to  what  part  of  you  this 
believing  faculty  is  to  be  ascribed ;  for  your  de- 
finition of  man  makes  him  incapable  of  believing 
any  thing,  unless  behoving  can  be  said  to  be  a 
passion,  or  some  faculty  of  skin  or  bones. 

^  p.  428.  ^  introduction. 

1—2 


REMARKS    ON    THE 


But  supposing  such  a  belief  as  yours,  be- 
cause of  its  blindness,  might  justly  be  called  a 
passion,  yet  surely  there  are  greater  things  con- 
ceived by  some  men  than  can  be  ascribed  to 
mere  passions,  or  skin  and  flesh. 

That  reach  of  thought,  and  strong  pene- 
tration which  has  carried  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
through  such  regions  of  science,  must  truly  be 
owing  to  some  higher  principle.  Or  will  you 
say,  that  all  his  demonstrations  are  only  so 
many  blind  sallies  of  passion  ? 

If  man  had  nothing  but  instincts  and  pas- 
sions, he  could  not  dispute  about  them ;  for  to 
dispute  is  no  more  an  instinct  or  a  passion, 
than  it  is  a  leg  or  an  arm. 

If  therefore  you  would  prove  yourself  to 
be  no  more  than  a  brute,  or  an  animal,  how 
much  of  your  life  you  need  alter  I  cannot  tell, 
but  you  must  at  least  forbear  writing  against 
virtue,  for  no  mere  animal  ever  hated  it. 

But  however,  since  you  desire  to  be 
thought  only  skin  and  flesh,  and  a  compound 
of  2^c(^ssions,  I  will  forget  your  better  part,  as 
much  as  you  have  done,  and  consider  you  in 
your  own  way.  You  tell  us,  that  the  moral 
virtues  are  the  p)olitical  offspring  which  flat- 
tery begot  upon  pride^. 

You  therefore,  who  are  an  advocate  for 
moral  vices,  should,  by  the  rule  of  contraries, 

•  p.  87. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  0 

be  supposed  to  be  acted  by  humility ;  but  that 
being  (as  I  think)  not  of  the  number  of  the 
passions,  you  have  no  claim  to  be  guided  by  it. 

The  prevailing  passions  which  you  say 
have  the  sole  government  of  man  in  their  turns, 
are  pride,  shame,  fear,  lust,  and  anger ;  you 
have  appropriated  the  moral  virtues  to  joride, 
so  that  your  own  conduct  must  be  ascribed 
either  to  fear,  shame,  anger,  or  lust,  or  else  to 
a  beautiful  union  and  concurrence  of  them  all. 

I  doubt  not  but  you  are  already  angry 
that  I  consider  you  only  as  an  animal,  that 
acts  as  anger,  or  lust,  or  any  other  passion 
moves  it,  although  it  is  your  own  assertion 
that  you  are  no  better.      But  to  proceed. 

Sagacious  moralists,  say  you,  draiu  men 
like  angels,  in  hopes  that  the  pride  at  least 
of  some  will  put  them  upon  copying  after  the 
beautiful  originals,  luhich  they  are  represented 
to  be\ 

I  am  loth  to  charge  you  with  sagacity, 
because  I  would  not  accuse  you  falsely;  but  if 
this  remark  is  well  made,  I  can  help  you  to 
another  full  as  just,  viz.  That  sagacious  advo- 
cates for  immorality  draiu  men  like  brutes, 
in  hopes  that  the  depravity  at  least  of  some 
luill  p)ut  them  upon  copying  after  the  base 
originals,  luhich  they  are  represented  to  be. 

The  province  you  have  chosen  for  yourself, 
2  p.  38. 


b  REMARKS    ON    THE 

is  to  deliver  man  from  the  sagacity  of  moralists, 
the  encroachments  of  virtue,  and  to  replace 
him  in  the  rights  and  privileges  of  brutality  ; 
to  recall  him  from  the  giddy  heights  of  rational 
dignity,  and  angelic  likeness,  to  go  to  grass,  or 
wallow  in  the  mire. 

Had  the  excellence  of  man's  nature  been 
only  a  false  insinuation  of  crafty  politicians,  the 
very  falseness  of  the  thing  had  made  some 
men  at  peace  with  it ;  but  this  doctrine  coming 
from  heaven,  its  being  a  principle  of  rehgion, 
and  a  foundation  of  solid  virtue,  has  roused  up 
all  this  zeal  against  it. 

And  God  said.  Let  us  make  man  in  our 
own  image,  after  our  likeness. 

This  was  a  declaration  of  the  dignity  of 
man's  nature,  made  long  before  any  of  your 
sagacious  moralists  had  a  meeting.  As  this 
doctrine  came  thus  early  from  heaven,  so  in 
the  several  ages  of  the  world  God  has  had  his 
oracles  and  prophets,  to  raise  men's  thoughts 
to  their  first  original ;  to  preserve  a  sense  of 
their  relation  to  God,  and  angehc  natures,  and 
encourage  them  to  expect  a  state  of  greatness 
suitable  to  that  image  after  which  they  were 
created  ;  to  assure  them,  that  they  that  sleep 
in  the  dust  of  the  earth  shall  aivake,  some  to 
everlasting  life,  and  some  to  shame  ami  ever- 
lasting contempt.  Ami  they  that  he  luise  shall 
shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament,  and 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  7 

they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness,  as  the 
stars  for  ever  and  ever^. 

The  last  revelation  which  God  has  made  to 
the  world,  by  his  Son  Jesus  Christ,  is  greatly- 
glorious  in  this  respect,  that  it  has  more  per- 
fectly brought  life  and  immortahty  to  light ; 
that  it  turns  our  thouo'hts  from  the  low  satis- 
factions  of  flesh  and  sense,  to  press  and  aspire 
after  the  deathless  state  of  greatness,  where 
we  shall  be  as  tlie  angels  of  God. 

It  is  not  therefore  the  sagacity  and 
cunning  of  any  philosophers  that  has  tricked 
men  into  notions  of  morality,  as  a  thing  suit- 
able to  a  pretended  dignity  of  nature  within 
them. 

But  it  is  God  himself  who  first  declared 
the  excellence  of  human  nature,  and  has  made 
so  many  revelations  since,  to  fill  men's  minds 
with  high  and  noble  desires  suitable  to  it. 

Before  I  proceed  to  consider  your  Enquiry 
into  your  Origin  of  Moral  Virtue,  I  shall  take 
notice  of  the  apology  that  you  make  to  Jews 
and  Christians. 

You  are  sensible  that  what  you  have  said 
is  inconsistent  both  with  the  old  and  new  testa- 
ment, and  therefore  thus  excuse  yourself  to 
your  scrupulous  reader. 

That  in  your  enquiry  into    the  origin  of 
moral  virtue,  you  speak  neither  of  the  Jews 
1  Dan.  xii.  2,  3. 


(S  REMARKS    ON    THE 

nor  Christians,  hut  man  in  his  state  of  nature 
and  ignorance  of  the  time  Deity  ^. 

The  absurdity  of  this  apology  will  appear 
from  hence  :  Let  us  suppose  that  you  had  been 
making  an  enquiry  into  the  origin  of  the  world, 
and  should  declare  that  it  arose  from  a  casual 
concourse  of  atoms,  and  then  tell  your  scru- 
pulous reader,  by  way  of  excuse,  that  you  did 
not  mean  the  world  which  Jeivs  and  Christians 
dwell  upon,  but  that  w^hich  is  inhabited  hy  man 
in  his  state  of  nature  and  ignorance  of  the 
true  Deity.  Could  any  thing  be  more  weak 
or  senseless  than  such  an  apology  ?  Yet  it  is 
exactly  the  same  as  that  which  you  have  here 
made. 

For  the  difference  of  Jew  or  heathen  no 
more  supposes  or  allows  of  two  different  origins 
of  morality,  than  it  supposes  or  allows  of  two 
different  origins  of  the  world.     »^^-  , 

For  as  the  creation  of  the  world  was  over, 
and  OAving  to  its  true  cause,  before  the  existence 
of  either  Jeiu  or  heathen,  so  morality  was  in 
being,  and  sprung  from  its  proper  source,  be- 
fore either  Jew  or  heathen  came  into  the  world. 
And  consequently  neither  the  origin  of  the  one 
or  the  other  admits  of  any  different  account, 
because  in  the  after  ages  of  the  world  some 
people  were  called  Jews,  and  others  heathens. 
Besides,  if  you  contradict  the  rehgion  of  Jews 

^  p.  tib. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES. 


and  Christians,  in  your  account  of  morality,  is 
it  less  a  contradiction,  or  less  false,  because  you 
pretend  that  your  face  was  turned  towards 
Pagans  ? 

If  you  was  to  assert  that  there  was  no  God, 
or  true  religion,  could  it  be  any  excuse  to  say 
that  you  w^as  speaking  to  a  Mahometan  ? 

2dly.    To  defend  your  account  of  the  origin 
of  morality,  you  suppose  man  in  a  state  of  na- 
ture,  savage  and  brutal,  without  any  notions  of  [ 
morality  or  ideas  of  religion. 

Now  this  very  supposition  is  so  far  from 
being  any  apology  for  you,  that  it  enhances 
your  accusation  :  for  you  suppose  such  a  state 
of  nature  (as  you  call  it)  as  the  scripture  makes 
it  morally  impossible  that  men  should  ever  have 
been  in.  , 

When  Noah's  family  came  out  of  the  ark  i 
we  presume  they  were  as  well  educated  in  the  i 
principles  of  virtue  and  moral  wisdom  as  any  j 
people  were  ever  since  ;   at  least,  we  arc  sure 
they  were  well  instructed  in  the  true  rehgion. 

There  was  therefore  a  time  when  all  the 
people  in  the  world  were  well  versed  in  moral 
virtue,  and  worshipped  God  according  to  the 
true  religion. 

He  therefore  that  gives  a  later  account  of 
the  origin  of  moral  virtue,  gives  ^  false  account 
of  it. 

Now  as  all   parts  of  the  world   were   by 


10  REMARKS    ON    THE 

degrees  inhabited  by  the  descendants  of  such 
ancestors  as  were  well  instructed  both  in  religion 
and  morality,  it  is  morally  impossible  that  there 
should  be  any  nation  of  the  world  amongst 
whom  there  were  no  remains  of  morality,  no 
instances  of  virtue,  no  principles  of  rehgion  de- 
rived from  their  ancestors. 

At  least  it  is  absolutely  impossible  for  you 
to  shew  that  there  was  any  such  nation,  free 
from  all  impressions  of  rehgion  and  morality. 
This  you  can  no  more  do  than  you  can  shew 
that  all  the  world  are  not  descended  from 
Adam. 

So  that  your  origin  of  moral  virtue  sup- 
poses a  state  of  man  which  the  scriptures  make 
it  morally  impossible  ever  to  happen,  and  which 
it  is  absolutely  impossible  for  you  to  shew  that 
it  really  did  ever  happen. 

But  supposing  some  of  the  posterity  of 
Noah,  in  some  corner  of  the  world,  should  have 
become  so  degenerate  as  to  have  not  the  least 
remains  of  virtue  or  rehgion  left  among  them  ; 
and  suppose  some  philosophers  should  get 
among  them,  and  wheedle  and  flatter  them 
into  some  notions  of  morality  ;  could  that  be 
called  an  account  of  the  origin  of  moral  virtue, 
when  moral  virtue  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world  had  been  practised  and  taught  by  the 
virtuous  ancestors  of  such  a  depraved  offspring? 

To  make  the  taming  of  some  such  supposed 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  11 

savage  creatures  the  origin  of  morality,  is  as 
just  a  way  of  thinking,  as  to  make  the  history 
of  the  curing  people  in  Bedlam  a  true  account 
of  the  origin  of  reason, 

3dly.  Your  apology  to  your  scrupulous 
reader,  as  if  your  origin  of  morality  related 
not  to  Jews  or  Christians,  is  false  and  absurd. 

Because  the  observations  which  you  have 
made  upon  human  nature,  on  which  your  origin 
of  moral  virtue  is  founded,  are  only  so  many 
observations  upon  the  manners  of  all  oixlers  of 
Christians.  It  is  their  falseness,  hypocrisy, 
pride,  and  passion,  that  have  induced  you  to 
consider  morality  as  having  no  rational  foun- 
dation in  man's  nature,  but  as  the  political  off- 
spring which  flattery  begot  iq:)on  pride. 

And  yet  you,  good  man,  are  not  talking 
about  Christians  or  Jews. 

But  every  page  of  your  book  confutes  that 
excuse,  and  indeed  needs  must ;  for  how  should 
your  observations  relate  to  any  but  to  those 
people  whose  natures  and  practices  have  fur- 
nished you  with  them  ? 

/  have,  say  you,  searched  through  eveft^y 
degree  and  station  of  men ;  at  last  you  tell  us, 
you  went  to  the  convents,  but  even  there  you 
found  that  all  was^arce  and  hypocrisy^. 

You  tell  us  also,  that  whoever  searches  thus 
deep  into  human  nature,  will  lind  that  moral 

'  p.  2G3. 


12  REMARKS    ON    THE 

virtue  is  the  ijolitical  offsjwhig  which  flattery 
begot  upon  pride.  Yet  this  searching  into  all 
orders  of  men,  into  convents,  and  from  thence 
making  this  discovery,  that  morality  is  all  owing 
to  pride  and  policy,  is  not  pronouncing  any 
thing  upon  Christians. 

Nothing  can  be  more  weak  than  to  form 
your  opinion  of  human  nature  upon  the  tem- 
pers and  practices  of  all  orders  of  Christians, 
and  then  pretend  you  are  only  treating  of  man 
in  such  a  state  of  nature  as  you  never  saw  one 
in  in  your  life. 

For  how  can  your  observations  upon  men 
under  the  power  of  education,  custom,  laws,  and 
religion,  tell  you  what  man  is  in  a  supposed 
state  where  all  these  are  wanting  ? 

Or  will  you  say  that  you  are  acquainted, 
and  intimately  acquainted  with  men,  so  entirely 
divested  of  all  the  ideas  of  religion,  morality, 
and  virtue,  that  you  can  make  their  natures  a 
true  specimen  of  man  in  his  most  savage,  brutal 
condition  ? 

Though  your  knowledge  of  human  nature 
was  great,  yet  you  was  forced,  it  seems,  to  visit 
the  convents,  before  you  could  pronounce  any 
thing  of  them.  It  seems  therefore  necessary, 
in  order  to  know  what  creatures  men  are  in  a 
state  of  brutality,  destitute  of  all  sense  of  God 
and  virtue,  that  vou  should  know  where  to  visit 
them. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  13 

Again,  this  apology  of  yours  happens  to 
be  inconsistent  with  the  first  and  main  principle 
upon  which  your  fine  discourse  is  founded :  I 
mean  your  definition  of  man,  whom  you  define 
to  be,  besides  skin,  flesh,  and  hones,  8>lg.  a  com- 
pound of  various  passions.  This  is  the  vile, 
abominable,  false,  proud  animal,  that  you  treat 
of  under  the  name  of  man.  In  your  excuse 
you  tell  us,  this  is  man  only  in  a  state  of  nature ; 
but  in  your  introduction  you  tell  us,  that  to 
forbear  complimenting,  that  definition  belongs 
both  to  yourself  and  the  courteous  reader. 

So  that  you  must  either  allow,  that  you  and 
your  courteous  readers  are  all  savages,  in  an 
unenhghtened  state  of  nature,  or  else  that  the 
man  you  have  described  belongs  to  all  orders 
of  Christians. 

Having  shewn  the  weakness  and  folly  of 
your  apology,  I  proceed  now  to  your  more  par- 
ticular account  of  the  origin  of  moral  virtue. 

You  are  pleased  to  impute  its  origin  to 
pride  alone,  that  having  the  same  cause  as  fine 
clothes  ;  we  may  wear  as  much,  or  as  little,  or  as 
we  please,  without  incurring  any  greater  offence 
than  a  little  variation  in  dress. 

If  p7'ide  be  the  only  foundation  of  virtue, 
then  the  more  vicious  any  one  is,  the  more 
humble  he  ought  to  be  esteemed ;  and  he  who 
is  the  most  humble  is  at  the  greatest  distance 
he  can  be  placed  from  moral  virtue.     And  a 


]  4  REMAKKS    OX    THE 

perfect  humility  (which  by  most  morahsts  has 
been  reckoned  a  virtue)  must,  according  to  this 
account,  render  any  one  incapable  of  any  virtue  ; 
for  such  a  one  not  only  wants  that  which  you 
make  the  only  cause  of  virtue,  but  is  possessed 
of  the  contrary  quality. 

Having  carefully  considered  human  nature, 
you  have  at  last  discovered,  that  the  moral 
virtues  are  the  political  offspring  which  flat- 
tery begot  upon  p)^'ide. 

You  are  so  fond  of  this  discovery,  that  you 
cannot  help  shewing  us  how  you  made  it. 

The  first  moralists  or  jDhilosophers,  say  you, 
thoroughly  examined  all  the  strength  and 
frailty  of  our  nature,  and  observing  that  none 
were  either  so  savage,  as  not  to  be  charmed 
with  praise,  or  so  despicable  as  2^<^ti^ntly  to 
bear  contempt,  justly  concluded  that  flattery 
must  be  the  ^jowerful  argument  that  could  be 
used  to  human  creatures} 

What  a  graphical  description  is  here !  One 
would  think  that  you  had  been  an  eye-witness 
to  all  that  passed,  and  that  you  had  held  the 
candle  to  those  first  philosophers  when  they 
were  so  carefully  peeping  into  human  nature. 
You  do  not  love  to  dwell  upon  little  matters,  or 
else  you  could  have  told  us  the  philosopher's 
name  who  first  discovered  this  flattery,  how 
long  he  looked   before   he    found  it,  how  he 

'  p.  29. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  15 

proved  it  to  bo  agreeable  to  pride,  -what  dis- 
putes happened  upon  the  occasion,  and  how 
many  ages  of  the  world  had  passed  before  this 
consultation  of  the  philosophers. 

But,  however,  you  pass  on  to  more  material 
points  :  They,  say  you,  (that  is  the  philoso- 
phers,) making  use  of  this  hewitchiiig  engine, 
extolled  the  excellence  of  our  nature  above  other 
animals.  Having  by  this  artful  luay  of  flat- 
tery insinuated  themselves  into  the  hearts  of 
men,  they  began  to  instruct  them  in  the  notions 
of  honour  and  shame ; — they  laid  before  them 
hoiu  unbecoming  it  luas  the  dignity  of  such 
sublime  creatures  to  be  solicitous  about  grati- 
fying those  apjjetites  ivhich  they  had  in  com- 
mon with  brutes,  «&c. 

This  you  take  to  be  a  sufficient  proof  that 
the  moral  virtues  are  the  jwlitical  offsjyring 
which  flattery  begot  upon  jwide. 

I  can  go  no  further  till  I  present  you  with 
a  fine  speculation  of  an  abstract  thinker  upon 
the  origin  of  the  erect  posture  of  mankind. 

"  It  was  his  opinion,  that  the  nearer  we 
search  into  human  nature,  the  more  we  shall 
be  convinced,  that  walking  upon  our  feet  with 
our  body  erect  was  the  p>olitical  offspring 
ivhich  flattery  begot  upon  p^ride. 

"  The  first  legislators,  says  he,  having  ex- 
amined the  strength  and  weakness  of  man's 
body,  they  discovered  that  he  was  not  so  top- 


16  REMARKS    ON    THE 

heavy,  but  that  he  might  stand  upright  on  his 
feet;  but  the  difficulty  was,  how  to  raise  him  up. 

"  Some  philosopher,  more  sagacious  than  the 
rest,  found  out,  that  though  man  crept  on  the 
ground,  yet  he  was  made  up  of  pride,  and  that 
if  flattery  took  hold  of  that,  he  might  easily  be 
set  on  his  legs. 

"Making  use  of  this  bewitching  engine,  they 
extolled  the  excellence  of  his  shape  above  other 
animals,  and  told  liim  what  a  grovelling  thing 
it  was  to  creep  on  all  four,  like  the  meanest 
animals. 

"Thus  did  these  first  philosophers  shame 
poor  man  out  of  his  natural  state  of  creeping, 
and  wheedled  him  into  the  dignity  and  honour 
of  walking  upright,  to  serve  their  own  ambitious 
ends,  and  that  they  might  have  his  hands  to  be 
employed  in  their  drudgery." 

This  gentleman,  being  deeply  learned  in  the 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  has  much  the  same 
curiosities  concerning  the  organ  of  speech,  and 
the  first  invention  of  truth,  which  he  thinks, 
upon  a  strict  research  into  nature,  may  very 
justly  be  ascribed  to  pride  and  flattery. 

But  to  return  to  your  history.  The  next 
thing  your  philosopher  did  was  this : 

In  order  to  introduce  an  emulation 
amongst  men,  they  divided  the  whole  s^oecies 
into  two  classes,  vastly  differing  from  one 
another.      The  one  consisted  of  vile,  grovelling 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  17 

wretches,  luhich  they  said  ivere  the  dross  of 
their  kind,  and  having  only  the  shape  0/ men, 
differed  from    brutes   only   in   their   outiuard 
figure  ;  hut  the  other  class  of  men  luere  made 
up  of  high-spirited  lofty  creatures^. 

Chronology  and  geography,  I  presume,  are 
studies  not  pohte  enough  for  your  attention,  or 
else  I  suppose  you  would  have  told  us  the  time 
when  and  the  place  where  all  this  happened. 

For  it  is  material  to  know  what  the  world 
was  doing  before  these  philosophers  made  this 
division  ;  whether  before  this  there  was  any 
fear  of  God,  any  belief  of  a  providence,  any 
duty  to  parents,  any  sense  of  equity,  any 
notions  of  faith,   or  any  regard  to   truth. 

For  if  the  enquiry  was  about  the  origin  of 
seeing,  or  hearing,  and  you  should  be  ever  so 
exact  in  telling  me  the  manner  how  some  cun- 
ning philosophers  first  brought  that  matter  to 
bear,  I  should  be  very  scrupulous  about  it, 
unless  you  told  me  the  time  when  and  the 
place  where  they  met,  what  they  were  doing 
before,  how  they  came  thither,  and  how  they 
knew  when  they  were  there. 

Now  there  is  just  this  same  difficulty  in 
your  account  of  the  origin  of  moral  virtue. 

For,  let  me  tell  you,  sir,  moral  virtue  came 
amongst  men  in  the  same  manner  as  seeing 
and  hearing  came  amongst  them. 

1  p.  30. 
2 


18  REMARKS    ON    THE 

Had  there  ever  been  a  time  when  there 
was  nothing  of  it  in  the  world,  it  could  no 
more  have  been  introduced,  than  the  faculties 
of  seeing  and  hearing  could  have  been  contrived 
by  men  who  were  blind  and  deaf. 

Were  not  the  first  principles  and  reasons 
of  morality  connatural  to  us,  and  essential  to 
our  minds,  there  would  have  been  nothing  for 
the  moral  philosophers  to  have  improved  upon. 

Nor  indeed  can  any  art  or  science  be 
formed,  but  in  such  matters  as  where  Nature 
has  taken  the  first  steps  herself,  and  shewn 
certain  principles  to  proceed  upon. 

Perspective  supposes  an  agreement  in  the 
different  appearances  of  objects.  Music  sup- 
poses a  confessed  perception  of  various  sounds, 
and  moral  philosophy  supposes  an  acknow- 
ledged difference  of  Good  and  Evil. 

Were  we  not  all  naturally  mathematicians 
and  logicians,  there  would  be  no  such  sciences ; 
for  science  is  only  an  improvement  of  those 
first  principles  or  ways  of  thinking  which 
Nature  has  given  us. 

Take  away  the  mathematician's  postidata, 
or  those  first  elements  and  principles  of  reason, 
which  are  allowed  by  the  common  sense  of 
mankind,  and  were  philosophers  even  as  cun- 
ning as  yourself,  they  must  give  up  all  the 
science. 

Do  but  suppose   all  to  be  invented,  and 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  19 

then  it  will  follow  that  nothing  could  be  in- 
vented in  any  science. 

It  is  thus  in  all  sciences :  the  rationahty  of 
our  nature  contains  the  first  rules  or  princi- 
ples, and  it  is  the  speculation  of  man  that  builds 
and  enlarges  upon  them. 

As  the  mathematician,  seeing  the  acknow- 
ledged differences  and  proportions  of  lines  and 
figures,  proceeded  upon  them  to  enlarge  men's 
knowledge  in  such  matters ;  so  the  moral  phi- 
losophers, seeing  the  acknowledged  difference  be- 
tween Right  and  Wrong,  Good  and  Evil,  which 
the  common  reason  of  man  consented  to,  they 
proceeded  to  enlarge  and  improve  upon  them. 

So  that  their  labours  are  but  speculations 
and  harangues  upon  those  common  principles 
of  morahty,  which  were  as  connatural  to  the 
reason  of  man,  as  the  first  principles  of  any 
other  science. 

Moral  j^hilosoph^  may  be  compared  to 
eloquence  ;  it  is  an  improvement  upon  the  com- 
mon reason  of  man,  as  eloquence  is  an  improve- 
ment upon  speech. 

Now  should  some  connoisseur  take  it  into 
his  head  to  inquire  into  the  origin  of  speech, 
and  tell  the  world,  "  That  once  upon  a  time, 
some  orators,  seeing  that  man  had  something  in 
his  mouth  by  the  movement  of  which  he  could 
make  a  particular  sound,  they  told  him  of  the 
dignity   and  honour    of  uttering  such   sounds, 


20  REMARKS    ON    THE 

and  so  through  the  pride  of  his  nature  taught 
the  animal  to  speak,  though  in  reaUty  it  was 
neither  natural  to  him,  nor  anv  true  excellence; 
but  ambitious  men  flattered  him  into  it,  that  he 
might  be  the  fitter  to  go  on  their  errands." 

Should  any  profound  thinker  give  this  ac- 
count of  the  origin  of  sj^eech,  you  would  have 
a  right  to  say  that  he  had  stole  the  discovery 
from  you,  who  have  given  us  just  the  same  false 
and  ridiculous  account  of  the  origin  of  morality. 

For  it  is  full  as  reasonable  to  make  elo- 
quence the  origin  of  forming  articulate  sounds, 
as  to  make  the  harangues  or  labours  of  moral 
philosophers  the  origin  of  moral  virtue. 

Could  it  be  supposed  that  an  understanding 
so  fine  as  yours  could  be  conveyed  to  your 
descendants,  and  that  you  should  ever  have  a 
grandson  as  wise  as  yourself,  it  may  be 
expected  that  he  will  be  able  to  teach  that 
generation  of  men  that  seeing  was  first  intro- 
duced into  the  world  by  Sir  Isaac  Newton's 
treatise  upon  ojytics. 

To  enquire  into  the  origin  of  moral  virtue, 
is  to  enquire  into  the  origin  of  reason,  truth, 
and  the  relations  of  things. 

And  to  fancy  that  some  politicians  contrived 
moral  virtue,  is  to  fancy  that  some  pohtician 
contrived  reason  and  truth,  and  invented  the 
difference  between  one  action  and  another. 

There  is  nothing   that  began   to   be,  but 


FARLE    OF    THE    BEES.  21 

what  may  be  destroyed  or  cease  to  be ;  but  as 
truth  and  reason  can  never  cease  to  be,  so  it 
imphes  a  contradiction  in  terms  for  truth  and 
reason  ever  to  have  had  a  beginning. 

It  is  the  same  in  moral  virtue,  which  is 
truth  and  reason  considered  in  relation  to 
actions  ;  and  the  difference  between  one  action 
and  another  is  as  immutable  and  eternal  as 
the  difference  between  one  line  and  another, 
and  can  no  more  be  destroyed. 

As  things  are  different  by  their  own  proper 
natures,  independent  of  our  wills,  so  actions 
have  their  own  peculiar  qualities  from  them- 
selves, and  not  from  our  thoughts  about  them. 
In  these  immutable  quahties  of  actions  i? 
founded  the  fitness  and  reasonableness  of  them., 
which  we  can  no  more  alter,  than  we  can  change 
the  proportions  or  relations  of  lines  and  figures. 

And  it  is  no  more  the  j9riVZe  of  man  that 
has  made  this  difference  between  actions,  than 
it  is  the  pride  of  man  that  makes  the  difference 
between  a  circle  and  a  square. 

Moral  virtue  therefore,  if  considered  in 
itself  as  the  rule  or  law  of  intelligent  beings, 
had  no  origin ;  that  is,  there  never  was  a  time 
when  it  began  to  be  ;  but  it  is  as  much  without 
beginning  as  truth  and  goodness,  which  are  in 
their  natures  as  eternal  as  God. 

But  moral  virtue,  if  considered  as  the 
object  of  man's  knowledge,  began  with  the  first 


22  EEMARKS    ON    THE 

man,  and  is  as  natural  to  him  as  it  is  natural 
to  man  to  think  and  perceive,  or  feel  the  differ- 
ence between  pleasure  and  pain. 

For  his  rational  nature  as  much  implies 
a  fitness  to  perceive  a  difference  in  actions  as  to 
right  and  wrong,  as  it  implies  a  fitness  to  per- 
ceive a  difference  in  things  as  to  great  and 
small,  pleasing  or  painful. 

It  may  now  be  enquired,  whether  this  moral 
virtue  be  our  laiv,  and  how  it  appears  that  we 
are  under  any  obligations  to  behave  ourselves 
according  to  this  difference  of  right  and  ivrong 
that  appears  in  actions. 

Now  the  reasonableness  and  fitness  of 
actions  themselves  is  a  law  to  rational  beings, 
and  the  sight  of  that  reasonableness  carries  an 
obligation. 

The  different  magnitude  of  things  is  a  reason 
to  us  to  acknowledge  such  difference ;  and  he 
that  affirms  any  thing  contrary  to  the  sight  of 
his  mind,  offends  against  the  law  of  his  nature. 

The  different  nature  of  actions  is  a  reason 
for  us  to  act  according  to  such  differences,  and 
he  who  does  any  thing  contrary  to  the  sight  of 
hLs  mind  in  that  respect,  sins  against  the  law  of 
his  nature. 

Now  that  this  is  not  an  imaginary  obliga- 
tion, or  a  law  fancied  by  morahsts,  may  appear 
from  hence  ;  that  this  is  a  law  to  which  even  the 
Divine  nature  is  subject ;  for  God  is  necessarily 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  23 

just  and  good,  not  from  any  external  force,  but 
from  the  excellence  of  justice  and  goodness. 
Reason  is  His  law,  because  it  is  reason.  That 
therefore  which  is  a  law  to  God  because  of  its 
excellence,  must  surely  be  a  law  to  all  beings 
whom  He  has  created  capable  of  discerning  that 
excellence.  For  if  the  reason  or  excellence  of 
the  thino'  be  of  sufficient  force  to  determine 
the  action  of  God,  certainly  it  ought  not  to  be 
thouo'ht  too  little  to  determine  us  in  our  actions. 

I^or  can  that  be  said  to  be  an  imao:inarv 
speculative  law  to  inteUigent  beings,  which  is  an 
inviolable  law  to  the  most  perfect  intelligent 
nature. 

2dly.  It  is  the  will  of  God  that  makes  moral 
virtue  our  law,  and  obliges  us  to  act  reasonably. 

If  you  ask  how  this  will  of  God  appears,  I 
must  beg  leave  at  present  only  to  suppose  that 
God  is  of  infinite  justice,  and  goodness,  and 
truth  ;  and  then  the  thing  proves  itself :  for 
such  a  God  must  necessarily  will  that  all  his 
creatures,  in  their  several  proportions,  be  just, 
and  good,  and  true. 

Few  mathematical  demonstrations  conclude 
stronger  than  this.  There  is  only  one  objection 
to  be  made  against  it,  which  is  to  suppose  that 
God  is  neither  just  nor  true. 

If  rather  than  yield,  you  will  put  the  Ejn- 
curean  upon  me,  and  say  that  God  may  disregard 
us,  and  neither  will  one  way  nor  the  other  ;  it 


24  REMARKS    ON    THE 

may  be  answered,  that  this  is  inconsistent  with 
the  idea  of  God  just  laid  down  :  for  a  God  of 
infinite  goodness  and  truth  can  no  more  fail  to 
will  goodness  and  truth  in  every  instance,  than 
an  infinite  being  can  fail  to  be  present  in  every 
place,  or  an  omnipotent  being  be  deficient  in  any 
acts  of  power.  So  that  it  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  say,  either  that  God  is  not  of  infinite 
goodness  and  truth,  or  to  allow  that  he  requires 
all  his  creatures  in  their  several  capacities  to  be 
just,  and  true,  and  good. 

Here,  sir,  is  the  noble  and  divine  origin  of 
moral  virtue;  it  is  founded  in  the  immutable  re- 
lations of  things,  in  the  perfections  and  attributes 
of  God,  and  not  in  the  'pride  of  man,  or  the 
craft  of  cunning  poHticians. 

As  the  reasons  and  obligations  to  moral 
virtue  have  always  been  in  being,  so  has  man- 
kind always  had  sight  of  them ;  it  being  as 
essential  and  natural  for  a  rational  being  to 
perceive  these  differences  or  actions,  as  it  is  for 
an  extended  being  to  occupy  space. 

And  the   creation  of  a  rational  nature  as 
much   implies   a  sight  of  the  reasonableness  of 
Jhings,  as  the  creation  of   an   extended  being 
implies  its  possession  of  so  much  space. 

Matter  of  fact  also  supports  this  observation  ; 
for  history  tells  us  of  no  age  or  country  where 
men  have  not  agreed  to  ascribe  justice,  goodness, 
and  truth,  to  the  Supreme  Being. 


FAELE    OF    THE     BEES.  ZO 

Now  this  shews  that  they  always  not  only 
knew  what  goodness,  justice,  and  truth  were, 
but  also  that  they  took  them  to  be  such  excellent 
qualities  as  ought  to  be  ascribed  to  the  highest 
and  best  Being;. 

How  monstrous  is  it,  therefore,  to  impute 
these  fine  moral  virtues  to  the  contrivance  of 
politicians,  when  all  ages  of  the  world  have 
agreed  to  ascribe  them  to  God,  and  number 
them  amongst  his  glorious  attributes ! 

God  is  just ;  therefore  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  justice,  independent  of  the  will  and  con- 
trivance of  man,  is  a  way  of  reasoning  that 
cannot  be  refuted. 

It  is  in  vain  to  say,  that  there  may  be  a 
divine  justice  and  goodness,  and  yet  what  we 
call  goodness  and  justice  amongst  men  may  be 
only  a  human  contrivance. 

For  to  this  it  may  be  answered,  that  we 
cannot  ascribe  any  thing  to  God  of  which  we 
have  not  some  conception  ourselves.  Did  we 
not  perceive  some  degrees  of  wisdom,  we  could 
not  call  him  all-wise;  did  we  not  feel  power, 
and  understand  what  it  is,  we  could  not  ascribe 
omnipotence  to  God.  For  our  idea  of  God  is 
only  formed  by  adding  infinite  to  every  per- 
fection that  we  have  any  knowledge  of. 

So  that  had  we  not  from  the  rationality  of 
our  nature  as  plain  a  sight  of  justice,  goodness, 
and  truth,  as  we  have  of  poxver^  existence,  or 


26  REMARKS    ON    THE 

any  thing  else,  we  could  not  attribute  tliem  to 
God. 

That  we  are  rational  beings,  is  as  plain  as 
that  we  have  bodies  and  bodily  senses.  As 
there  is  no  man  so  refined  and  elevated  but 
gives  frequent  proof  that  he  is  subject  also  to 
instincts  and  passions;  so  there  is  no  one  so 
addicted  to  an  animal  life  as  to  shew  no  signs 
of  an  higher  principle  within  him. 

It  is  this  rationality  of  our  nature  that 
makes  us  both  capable  of,  and  obliged  to  prac- 
tise, moral  virtue,  and  brings  us  into  a  kind  of 
^'  society  with  God  and  all  other  intelhgent  beings. 
For  our  reason  gives  us  a  share  in  that 
common  light  which  all  intelligent  beings  enjoy, 
and  by  making  us  partakers  of  the  same  things, 
so  far  makes  us  of  one  society. 

By  our  reason  we  know  some  truths  wliich 
God  and  all  intelligent  beings  know,  and  ap- 
prehend some  perfections,  and  different  qualities 
in  things  and  actions,  which  all  intelligent  beings 
apprehend. 

Now  by  being  let  into  this  region  of  truth, 
by  being  able  to  see  some  truths  which  God 
also  sees,  and  to  know  some  perfections  which 
he  also  knows,  we  are  as  plainly  declared  to  be 
rational  beings,  and  that  reason  is  one  law  of 
our  nature,  as  the  principles  of  flesh  and  blood 
shew  us  to  be  animals,  and  subject  to  the  in- 
stincts of  an  animal  life. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  27 

For  how  weak  is  it  to  suppose  that  the 
animal  hfc  should  be  the  foundation  of  laws  of 
nature,  so  as  to  make  it  fit  for  us  to  act  agree- 
able to  its  wants  and  desires ;  and  that  the 
rationality  of  our  being s,  which  is,  in  some  de- 
gree, a  likeness  to  God,  should  be  the  founda- 
tion of  no  laws  of  nature,  so  as  to  make  it  fit 
for  us  to  act  suitable  to  its  perfection  and  hap- 
piness ! 

The  short  is  this,  truth  and  reason  is  the 
law  by  which  God  acts ;  man  is,  in  some  de- 
gree, made  a  partaker  of  that  truth  and  reason ; 
therefore  it  is  a  law  to  him  also.  The  more 
we  act  according  to  Order,  Truth,  and  Reason, 
the  more  we  make  ourselves  like  to  God,  who  is 
truth  and  reason  itself. 

This  is  the  strong  and  immoveable  founda- 
tion of  moral  virtue,  having  the  same  certainty 
as  the  attributes  of  God. 

Away  then,  I  beseech  you,  with  your  idle 
and  profane  fancies  about  the  origin  of  mo^^al 
virtue.  For  once  turn  your  eyes  towards 
heaven,  and  dare  but  own  a  just  and  good 
God,  and  then  you  have  owned  the  true  origin 
of  religion  and  moral  virtue. 

Thus  much  will,  I  presume,  be  thought  suf- 
ficient to  vindicate  the  excellence  and  obliga- 
tions of  moral  virtue  from  the  false  and  impious 
accounts  you  have  given  of  its  origin. 

I   proceed  to  consider,  in  the  next  place, 


28  REMARKS    OX    THE 

some  other  methods  that  are  made  use  of  to 
render  moral  virtue  odious  and  contemptible. 


SECTION  II. 


The  most  boasted  objection  against  the 
reahty  of  virtue  which  is  urged  by  men,  who 
appropriate  the  knowledge  of  human  nature  to 
themselves,  is  this,  that  no  action  is  performed 
by  us  through  a  love  of  goodness,  or  upon  a 
rational  principle  of  virtue ;  but  that  it  is  com- 
j)lexion,  natural  temper,  education,  jjride, 
shame,  or  some  other  blind  impulse  that  moves 
us  in  all  our  actions  that  have  the  appearance 
of  virtue.  Thus  a  man  who  relieves  an  object 
of  compassion,  only  gratifies  his  commiserating 
temper;  he  is  subject  to  pitg,  tvhich  is  a  frailty 
of  our  natures,  and  of  which  the  vjeakest  minds 
have  generally  the  greatest  share,  as  may  be 
seen  in  women  and  children^.  Again,  the 
humblest  man  alive,  say  you,  must  confess, 
that  the  reward  of  a  virtuous  action,  which  is 
the  satisfaction  that  ensues  iqwn  it,  consists 
in  a  captain  pleasure  he  produces  to  himself  in 
contemplating  his  own  worth ;  which  pleasure, 
together  with  the  occasion  of  it,  are  as  certain 
signs  of  pride,  as  looking  pale  and  trembling 

1  p.  42. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  29 

at  any  imminent  danger  are  the  symjJtoms  of 
fear~. 

IS'ow,  sir,  if  this  be  a  true  account  of  the  ' 
humblest  man  alive,  then,  by  the  rule  of  con- 
traries, this  must  be  a  true  account  of  the  proud- 
est man  alive,  that  the  satisfaction  he  enjoys 
in  being  so,  consists  in  a  certain  pleasure  he 
procures  to  himself  by  contemplating  his  own 
vileness. 

This  accurate  description  you  have  given 
us  of  the  p)leasure  of  the  humblest  man  alive, 
must  be  owing  to  such  a  feeling  sense  as  the 
blind  man  had  of  light,  vrho  being  asked  what 
it  was  like,  answered,  that  it  was  like  the  sound 
of  a  trumpet. 

But  to  consider  this  charge  against  human 
virtue,  that  it  is  notliing  but  education,  natural 
temper,  or  complexion ;  this  being  so  laboured 
a  point,  I  shall  state  the  whole  matter  as  clearly 
as  I  can. 

1st.      It  is  granted  that  an  action  is  only    \ 
then  virtuous  when  it  is  performed,  because  it     I 
is  agreeable  to  reason,  and  those  laws  which 
God  requires  us  to  observe. 

Now  this  virtue  is  man's  duty,  not  as  a  task 
that  is  imposed  upon  him,  but  as  it  is  the  only 
practice  that  is  the  natural  pleasure  and  proper 
good  of  his  bcinc:. 

Virtue  ha  vino-  that  natural  fitness  to  a  ra- 

o 

'^  p.  43, 


-^ 


30  REMARKS    ON    THE 

/  tional  soul  that  fine  sights  have  to  the  eye,  or 
harmonious  sounds  to  the  ear. 

A  rational  being  is  in  order,  in  its  right 
state  and  frame,  when  it  is  acting  reasonably. 

The  infinite  goodness  of  God  makes  him  in- 
finitely happy,  and  the  perfection  of  every  being 
is  its  happiness;  and  the  greater  and  more  per- 
fect the  virtue  of  any  one  is,  the  more  perfect 
is  his  happiness. 

Now  it  is  here  to  be  observed,  that  an  ac- 
tion is  not  less  virtuous,  or  loses  any  of  its  ex- 
cellency, because  the  soul  is  delighted  and  made 
happy  by  it ;  for  it  is  the  very  nature  of  virtue 
to  produce  such  eifects,  and  it  shews  the  recti- 
tude of  the  soul  when  it  can  act  virtuously  with 
dehght,  and  feel  its  happiness  in  so  doing. 

This  is  being  virtuous  upon  principle,  and 
through  a  love  of  goodness;  for  goodness  is 
loved  for  itself,  when  it  is  loved  for  what  it  is, 
the  true  good  and  proper  delight  of  a  rational 
being.     "' 

Now  will  any  one  say  that  there  is  no  ex- 
cellence in  virtue,  that  it  is  mere  nature  and 
temper,  because  it  is  so  agreeable,  so  proper  to 
our  rational  natures  ?  Then  let  him  say  there 
is  no  excellence  in  the  goodness  and  justice  of 
God,  because  they  are  so  suitable  to  his  nature, 
and  constitute  his  happiness. 

Granting  therefore  that  virtue  was  its  own 
reward,  as  it  elevates  and  perfects  the  soul,  and 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  31     \  / 1  ^-f 


keeps  it  in  a  state  of  right  enjoyment,  it  would 
not  be  the  less  reasonable  on  that  account. 

For  happiness  is  the  only  reasonable  end  of 
every  being. 

An  action  is  not  good,  or  virtuous,  because 
it  is  self-denial,  but  because  it  is  according  to 
duty  ;  and  he  who  through  long  habits  of  good- 
ness has  made  the  practice  of  virtue  to  have 
less  of  self-denial  in  it,  is  the  most  virtuous 
man. 

Now  it  is  no  objection  against  the  recdity 
of  goodness,  that  as  rational  beings  we  are  na- 
turcdly  and  comj^lexionalli/  disposed  to  practise 
and  dehght  in  it ;  or  that  this  natural  dispo- 
sition may  by  exercise,  meditation,  and  habit,  j 
be  heightened  and  increased.  ■ 

For  custom,  habit,  and  natural  temper,  are 
proper  assistances  of  our  most  virtuous  actions, 
and  cannot  be  said  to  make  them  less  reasonable, 
unless  it  be  a  fault  or  imperfection  to  be  habi- 
tually and  strongly  disposed  to  goodness. 

Thus  much  therefore  is  true  of  us  considered 
only  as  rational  beings ;  that  we  must  even  in 
that  state  be  by  nature  and  temper  formed  to 
perceive  pleasure,  from  some  particular  ways  of    I 
acting  ;  and  that  the  very  excellence  of  our  na-    1 
tures  consists  in  a  fitness  and  disposition  for 
virtuous  actions,   which   the  more   we  improve 
and  strengthen  by   meditation  and  habit,    the    j 
more  reasonable  we  make  ourselves. 


32  REMARKS    ON     THE 

,  It  has  pleased  God  in  the  formation  of  man 
ISO  to  unite  this  rational  nature  to  a  hody  of 
iflesh  and  blood,  that  they  shall  generally  act  to- 
Igether ;  and  that  the  soul  shall  as  well  be  influ- 
ienced  by  bodily  instincts,  and  motions  of  the 
Iblood  and  spirits,  as  by  its  own  thoughts  and 
I  reflections. 

Thus,  a  dehghtful  thought  conceived  ever 
so  secretly  in  the  mind,  shall,  at  its  first  con- 
ception, have  the  blood  and  spirits  join  in  the 
pleasure. 

\         So  that  every  right  judgment  of  the  mind, 
Vevery  proper  aversion,  or  regular  love,  has  as 
much  the  concurrence  of  the  blood  and  spirits, 
as  if  they  were  the  only  agents. 

The  body  being  thus  visibly  an  agent  in  all 
that  we  do,  has  made  some  weak  heads  imagine 
that  we  are  nothing  else  but  body  ;  as  from  the 
same  want  of  thought  some  have  concluded  that 
there  is  nothing  besides  the  material  world,  be- 
cause nothing  else  is  obvious  to  their  eyes. 
I         The  soul  being  thus  united  to  the  body,  no 
I  act  of  the  man  is  less  reasonable  or   virtuous, 
because  it  has  the  concurrence  of  the  blood  and 
spirits ;  for  this  was  the  intention  of  the  union, 
Ithat  a  creature   of  such  a  form  should  exert  its 
(instincts  and  passions  in  conformity  to  reason. 

I        For  instance,  suppose  any  one  should  medi- 
tate upon  the  attributes  and  perfections  of  God, 
(till  the  great  idea  had  raised  and  w^armed  his 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  S3 

Spirits ;  though  the  reflection  is  then  supported 
by  the  agitation  of  bodily  spirits,  yet  the  medi- 
tation is  not  less  religious,  or  less  devout,  or 
reasonable,  because  the  heat  of  bodily  spirits 
assisted  in  it. 

Suppose  any  one  should  so  often  reflect 
upon  an  eternal  state  of  darkness  and  separa- 
tion from  God,  till  his  blood  and  spirit  join  in 
increasing  the  horror ;  such  an  horror  would 
not  be  less  reasonable,  because  the  body  joined 
in  keeping  it  up. 

The  mechanical  influence  which  our  spirits 
and  temperament  have  upon  our  actions  does 
not  take  away  from  the  reasonableness  of  them, 
any  more  than  the  rational  frame  of  our  minds, 
which  is  naturally  disposed  to  acquiesce  in  the 
reason  of  things,  destroys  the  reasonableness  of 
actions. 

As  it  would  be  no  excellence  in  a  pure 
thinking  being  to  be  equally  inclined  to  truth 
or  falsehood  ;  so  it  would  add  no  merit  to  such  a 
mixed  nature  as  ours  is,  if  our  bodily  tempera- 
ments were  neither  more  or  less  inclined  to,  or 
delighted  with,  one  sort  of  actions  than  another. 

Let  us  only  suppose  that  a  rational  soul 
and  an  animal  nature  were  united  to  act  in  a 
state  of  personality. 

It  cannot  be  that  the  reasonableness  of  its 
actions  should  be  impaired  by  the  body's  ap- 
pearing to  have  a  share  in  them,  because  it  does 
3  ^  t 


34  KEMARKS    ON    THE 

not  act  according  to  its  nature,  unless  the  body 

1  does  concur ;  and  in  such  a  mixed  beinof  it  is 

no  more  required  that  its  actions  should  be  per- 

j  formed   abstractly  by   pure  reason,   than  it  is 

■  allowed  that  its  motions  should  be  merely  animal. 

Yet  this  is  the  false  judgment  wliich  men 

who  are  not  the  greatest  friends  of  virtue  make, 

because  the  influence  of  the  animal  nature  is 

visible  in  the  best  of  men ;  and  because  such 

enquirers  generally  converse  intimately  only  with 

the  worst,  they  rashly  conclude  against  all  force 

of  principle,  and  deny  reason  to  have  any  share 

in  our  actions. 

From  what  has  been  said  we  may  easily 
support  the  reality  of  virtue  from  all  the  ob- 
jections of  these  critics  upon  human  nature. 
/  For  granting  the  force  of  education,  the 
power  of  custom,  and  the  influence  of  our  bodily 
instincts  and  tempers ;  yet  nothing  can  thence 
be  concluded  against  the  share  that  reason  and 
principle  are  required  to  have  in  our  actions. 

For  both  reason  and  religion  direct  us  to 
use  the  influence  and  assistance  of  all  these 
helps ;  and  consequently  they  no  more  lessen 
or  take  from  the  reality  of  virtuous  actions, 
when  we  are  assisted  by  them,  than  fasting  or 
prayer  make  our  piety  less  excellent,  because 
it  was  assisted  by  them. 

And  it  is   as   suitable   to   our   natures   to 
streno'then   and  establish   our  virtue,    bv  edu- 


FABLE    OF    THE     BEES.  S5 

cation,  custom,  complexion,  and  bodily  instincts, 
as  it  is  suitable  to  religion  "  to  improve  and 
heighten  it  by  fasting  and  prayer. 

And  he  who  savs  that  such  or  such  actions 
have  no  principle  of  virtue  or  religion  in  them, 
because  they  are  made  easy  by  education, 
temper,  and  practice,  thinks  as  weakly  as  if 
he  should  affirm  that  such  actions  have  no 
reaUty  of  principle  in  them,  because  they  are 
the  effects  of  meditation  and  habits  of  attention ; 
for  good  habits  of  body  no  more  lessen  the  ex- 
cellence of  virtue  than  good  habits  of  mind. 

An  action  is  virtuous  because  it  is  an  obe- 
dience to  reason  and  the  laws  of  God,  and 
does  not  cease  to  be  so,  because  the  body  is 
either  formed  by  use,  or  created  by  disposition, 
easy  and  ready  for  the  performance  of  it. 

A  good  education  would  be  a  sin,  if  the 
benefit  that  is  received  from  it,  or  the  facihtv 
of  performing  good  actions,  took  away  from 
their  goodness. 

JN'ay,  all  habits  of  virtue  would,  upon  this 
foot,  be  blameable,  because  such  habits  must  be 
supposed  to  have  rendered  both  body  and  mind 
more  ready  and  exact  in  goodness. 

All  these  absurdities  necessarily  follow  from 
this  argument,  that  there  is  no  virtuous  princi- 
ple in  our  good  actions,  because  custom,  edu- 
cation, temper,  and  complexion,  have  their  share 
in  them. 

3—2 


/ 


o 


6  REMARKS    ON    THE 


2ndly.  This  objection  against  the  reality  of 
virtue  is  rather  a  calumny  than  any  just  charge 
against  it. 

For  as  it  is  as  certain  that  we  think  and 
j reason,  as  that  we  are  subject  to  bodily  instincts 
[and  habits,  nothing  can  prove  that  our  reason 
I  and  reflection  do  not  principally  concur  in  any 
j  action,  but  the  impossibility  of  it.      He  there- 
j  fore  that  would  prove  that  my  mind  does  not 
;act  upon  a  principle  of  reason,  where  he  thinks 
that    temper     or    complexion    may    carry    me 
through  it,  can  never  prove  it  till  he  can  shew 
I  that  there  was  no  principle  of  reason,  no  proper 
"Tmotive,  no  precept  of  duty;  toK  move  me  to  it ; 
f'^for  if  there  be  a  plain  reason  in  the  thing,  if 
there  be  a  precept  of  duty  to  excite  my  mind, 
as  well  as  a  natural  disposition  in  my  temper 
to  perform  the  action,  it  is  impossible  for  the 
most  penetrating  genius  to  prove  that  my  tem- 
j^erament   had   a  greater  share    in  the   action 
than  the  reason  of  my  mind ;  and  consequently 
this  objection  is  a  mere  calumny,  and  an  ill- 
natured  suspicion,  which  can  never  prove  itself 
to  be  justly  made. 

Now,  that  reason  is  the  chief  principle  in 
the  performance  of  good  actions,  may,  in  some 
degree,  be  learnt  from  hence,  that  reasonable 
and  wise  actions  never  occasion  any  sorrow  or 
repentance  in  the  mind ;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
in   violent  actions,    where   the  fermentation  of 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  37 

the  blood  and  spirits  may  be  supposed  to  have 
bhndly  hurried  on  the  action,  that  fermentation 
is  no  sooner  abated,  but  there  arises  a  pain  in 
the  mind,  and  reason  condemns  the  action ;  which 
condemnation  chiefly  consists  in  this,  that  reason 
had  not  the  guidance  of  it ;  which  is  a  plain 
confession  that  it  is  the  way  of  our  nature  to 
have  reason  govern  the  instincts  and  motions  of 
the  spirits,  and  that  she  shrinks  and  is  uneasy 
at  those  actions  where  she  was  not  the  principal 
agent. 

If  therefore  actions  only  satisfy  and  content 
us  by  being  approved  by  our  reason,  it  is  a 
manifest  proof  that  our  reason  is  the  principal 
agent  in  our  good  actions. 

Nor  will  it  be  any  objection  to  this  to  say 
that  many  people  are  satisfied  with  false  notions 
of  virtue  and  rehgion ;  for  this  only  shews  that 
the  principle  of  reason  may  be  weak,  and  of 
very  little  discerning  force  in  some  people ;  but 
still  it  is  their  faculty  of  reason,  such  as  it  is, 
that  gives  them  peace  when  it  presides ;  and 
it  is  living  contrary  to  reason  that  gives  them 
pain,  as  it  gives  pain  to  others  who  enjoy  a 
more  enhghtened  mind. 

If  the  religious  Turk  abhors  the  abomi- 
nation of  wine,  it  cannot  be  said  that  such 
abhorrence  is  only  the  eff*ect  of  temper,  bodily 
instincts,  and  custom,  unless  it  could  be  shewn 
that    he   would   equally   abhor   it,    though    he 


38  REMARICS    ON    THE 

was   fully    persuaded    that    Mahomet    was    a 
cheat. 

From  this  account  of  human  nature  we 
may  be  able  to  reject  all  those  reproaches 
which  are  cast  upon  virtue  and  religion,  as  if 
they  were  never  founded  upon  any  rational 
principle,  but  were  the  casual  blind  effects  of 
custom,  education,  temper,  or  complexion. 

1st.  As  it  appears  that  in  our  rational  natures 

we  are  naturally  and  complexionally  formed  to 

practise  and  dehght  in  reasonable  actions,  and 

jjlK.  *  ithat  such  a  tendency  of  temper  or  nature  to- 

S   ..X   wards  virtue  no  more  lessens  the  excellence  of 

it  than  the  rectitude  of  God's  natm^e  takes  away 

the  excellence  of  his  actions. 

!         2ndly.     That  actions  are  not  less  virtuous 

^for  being  suitable  to  any  disposition,  whether 

I  natural  or  acquired,  than  for  being  suitable  to 

I  the  reason  of  the  mind. 

3rdly.  That  education,  custom,  habits, 
complexion,  &c.  are  so  far  from  taking  away 
the  reasonableness  of  our  actions,  that  we  could 
I  not  be  said  to  act  reasonably,  unless  we  endea- 
voured to  make  a  greater  progress  in  virtue  by 
their  assistance. 

4thly.  That  it  is  impossible,  even  in  those 
actions  where  custom,  education,  complexion, 
and  habit,  seem  to  be  in  full  power,  for  any  one 
to  prove  that  reason  and  principle  have  not  the 
greatest  share  in  them.  , 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  -39 

5thly.  That  peace  of  mind,  which  attends 
our  good  actions,  is  a  plain  proof  of  the  power 
which  our  reason  had  in  the  performance  of 
them. 

To  come  now  to  a  particular  instance  or  two. 

1st.  Philo's  charity  and  compassion  is  no 
virtue,  you  say,  because  it  is  mere  complexion 
and  temper :  he  gratifies  his  pity^  and  acts  in 
conformity  to  his  blood  and  spirits. 

Now  this  is  so  far  from  proving  that  he 
has  not  the  virtue  of  charity,  that  it  might  be 
urged  as  a  proof  of  his  having  it. 

For  his  body  is  in  that  disposition  that  it 
should  be,  supposing  that  his  mind  had  been 
long  exercised  and  endued  with  habits  of  cha- 
rity ;  it  gives  that  further  pleasure  in  charitable 
acts  which  the  right  turn  of  the  instincts,  and 
blood,  and  spirits,  should  give  to  the  mind  in 
every  virtuous  action. 

For,  as  I  have  observed,  man  is  then  in  his 
best  state,  when  the  course  of  the  blood  and 
spirits  act  in  concurrence  with  his  reason ;  so 
that  when  my  body,  with  its  instincts  and 
motions,  joins  with  the  right  judgments  of  my 
mind,  what  I  so  perform  has  all  the  perfection 
that  a  human  creature  is  able  to  exert. 

This  complexion  therefore,  or  bodily  dispo- 
sition towards  charitable  acts,  is  so  far  from 
implying  that  therefore  the  mind  has  no  share 
in  the  action,  that  were  the  mind  in  its  best 


.^ 


40  REMARKS    ON    THE 

state,  and  in  its  full  power  (as  at  first  created), 
it  would  use  a  greater  and  more  constant  con- 
currence of  all  bodily  tempers  in  the  perform- 
ance of  its  duty. 

So  that  when  complexion  or  bodily  tempe- 
rament readily  join  in  the  performance  of  good 
actions,  this  is  so  far  from  implying  any  defect 
of  principle,  or  want  of  rational  motive,  that  it 
shews,  in  some  degree,  the  remains  of  that 
primitive  rectitude  of  body  and  mind  before  the 
fall. 

2ndly.  To  say  that  Philo's  charity  is  mere 
complexion,  is  a  calumny  and  groundless  accu- 
sation ;  it  is  a  suspicion  as  ill-grounded  as  if  I 
was  to  suspect  that  a  man  had  no  pride  in  his 
mind,  because  there  appeared  an  haughtiness  in 
his  carriage  ;  or  no  humihty  within,  because  of 
a  natural  lowliness  without :  it  is  a  suspicion 
thus  founded  against  all  the  appearances  of 
truth,  and  is  forced  to  make  those  the  proofs  of 
the  absence  of  a  thing,  which  are  the  natural 
signs  of  its  presence. 

And  as  it  is  thus  unreasonable,  so  is  it 
utterly  impossible  that  it  should  ever  justify 
itself. 

I        For  seeing  it  is  not  only  possible,  but  na- 
'tural  for  this  complexional  disposition  to  act  in 
conformity  to  the  internal  principle  of  the  mind^^ 
it  can  never  be  proved  that  it  does  not. 

It  can  never   be  proved  that  reason  and 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  41 

religion  have  not  a  greater  share  in  Philo's 
charity,  than  his  complexion.  How  far  some 
precept  of  religion,  some  principle  of  reason 
may  influence  his  mind,  cannot  be  known  by 
the  most  sagacious  philosopher ;  therefore  the 
charge  against  his  charity,  as  the  mere  effect 
of  complexion,  must  be  always  ill-natured,  un- 
just, and  groundless. 

Further,  granting  that  Philo  was  complex- 
ionally  disposed  to  pity  and  compassion,  even 
before  he  could  be  supposed  to  act  upon  a 
principle  of  virtue  and  religion,  yet  even  this 
supposition  will  make  nothing  against  it  after- 
wards. 

For  will  any  one  argue  that  a  man  can  \ 
never  fear,  love,  or  hate,  upon  principles  of  I 
reason,  because  children  fear,  love,  and  hate,  \ 
before  reason  is  of  any  force  to  direct  them  ? 

Yet  this  is  as  wise  as  to  suppose  that  a 
man's  complexion  is  never  made  to  concur  with 
a  principle  of  reason,  because  such  complexion 
appeared  before  reason  could  be  supposed  of 
sufiicient  power  to  guide  it. 

As  to  what  you  say,  that  Pity  is  as  much 
a  frailty  of  our  nature  as  anger,  pride,  ^c. : 
that  the  weakest  minds  have  generally  tlie 
greatest  share  of  it,  for  which  reason  none  are 
more  comj^assionate  than  ivomen  and  children^ : 

Two  things  may   be   observed  :    first,    the 

'p.  42. 


i2  REMARKS    ON    THE  -f~-    a 

inconsistency  of  this  assertion  with  the  rest  of 
your  book. 

Here  you  derive  the  compassion  of  women 
from  a  supposed  weakness  of  mind;  which  sup- 
poses that  their  tempers  depend  upon  their 
minds,  and  are  subject  to  them,  and  influenced 
by  them  ;  though  in  this  very  page  you  make 
pity  to  be  only  an  impulse  of  nature,  and  it 
is  your  chief  design  throughout  your  book  to 
shew  that  all  our  tempers  and  passions  are 
mere  mechanism  and  constitution,  founded  only 
in  the  temper  and  tone  of  our  bodily  spirits. 

So  that,  according  to  your  deep  philosophy, 
pity  is  only  an  impulse  of  nature  and  bodily 
temper ;  yet  women  are  more  pitiful  than  men, 
because  they  have  (as  you  suppose)  lueaker 
mhids. 

That  is,  their  minds,  because  weak,  have  a 
power  over  their  tempers,  and  form  their  dis- 
positions ;  but  men's  minds,  being  strong,  have 
no  such  power. 

To  what  temper  of  mind  such  philosophy 
as  this  is  to  be  imputed,  need  not  be  observed. 

2ndly.  To  say  that  women  have  the  lueak- 
est  minds,  is  saying  more  than  you  are  able  to 
prove.  If  they  are  more  inclined  to  compas- 
sion, through  a  tenderness  of  nature,  it  is  so  far 
from  being  a  lueakness  of  their  minds,  that  it  is 
a  right  judgment,  assisted,  or  made  more  easy, 
by  a  happy  tenderness  of  their  constitutions. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  43 

And  it  is  owing,  perhcaps,  to  this  mahe  of 
their  spirits,  that  they  are  commonly  more  af- 
fected with  the  truths  of  religion  than  the 
generahty   of  men  are. 

"When  our  minds  are  once  softened,  by  what- 
ever cause  it  is,  we  are  generally  in  the  best 
disposition  for  the  impressions  of  rehgion ;  so 
that  j^ity  is  so  far  from  being  as  much  a  frailty 
as  ^^rwZe  and  anger,  that  they  are  as  different 
in  their  effects  as  a  heart  of  flesh  and  a  heart 
of  stone,  which  holy  scripture  makes  as  different 
as  a  blessing  and  a  curse. 

But  to  return  (if  this  be  a  digression)  to 
my  subject. 

Let  us  now  further  suppose  that  Philo's 
charity  is  greatly  owing  to  his  nature  and  com- 
plexion ;  that  the  quality  of  his  spirits  began 
the  disposition,  and  helped  to  recommend  this 
virtue  to  the  mind ;  yet  may  such  a  virtue  be 
as  truly  rational  and  religious  as  if  it  had  been 
let  into  the  mind  any  other  way. 

Sickness,  poverty,  and  distress,  have  a  na- 
tural tendency  to  correct  our  folhes,  and  convert 
our  minds  towards  our  true  good.  These  con- 
ditions of  life  may  make  it  as  easy  for  a  man 
to  be  humble  and  compassionate  as  any  bodily 
complexion  whatever ;  yet  is  such  humility  and 
compassion  not  to  be  esteemed  void  of  principle 
or  reason,  because  such  causes  contributed  to- 
wards them,  and  led  the  mind  into  them. 


44  REMARKS    ON    THE 

For  the  mind  is  acting  according  to  the 
truest  principles  of  reason  and  religion  when  it 
makes  advantage  of  these  external  helps,  and 
turns  ease  and  pain,  sickness  and  health,  into 
occasional  causes  of  greater  piety. 

Nor  is  it  any  more  a  diminution  of  the 
reality  of  Philo's  charity,  to  say  that  bodily 
temper  first  prepared  and  inclined  his  mind 
towards  it,  than  it  is  a  diminution  of  the  reality 
of  any  one's  repentance,  to  say  that  it  was  some 
misfortune  or  cross  accident  that  first  disposed 
and  fitted  his  mind  for  it. 

David  said,  (without  fear  of  destroying  the 
reahty  of  his  piety),  It  is  good  for  me  that  I 
have  heen  afflicted. 

Now  if  actions  or  ways  of  life  may  be  good, 
though  afflictions  contributed  towards  them, 
surely  they  may  be  equally  good,  though  some 
bodily  tempers  proved  in  some  degree  the  oc- 
casions of  them. 

And  it  is  as  consistent  with  true  and  real 
virtue  to  owe  itSj-fise  to  some  bodily  constitu- 
tion or  temper,  as  it  is  consistent  with  solid  and 
substantial  piety  to  owe  its  beginning  to  some 
particular  calamity  or  action  of  God's  provi- 
dence. 

But  to  proceed :  It  is  further  objected  that 
Philo's  charity  must  be  mere  complexion,  and 
not  virtue ;  for  if  it  were  virtue,  he  would  not 
allow  himself  in  the  neglect  of  other  duties. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  45 

This,  again,  is  a  false  conclusion  ;  for  a 
man  may  perform  one  duty  upon  a  principle 
of  virtue  and  sense  of  duty,  and  yet,  through 
mistake  or  negligence,  be  deficient  in  others. 

Such  great  judges  of  human  nature  should 
consider,  that  even  in  worldly  aifairs  a  man 
does  not  always  act  up  to  the  same  principle  in 
everything  he  does. 

Will  any  one  say  that  Avarus  does  not 
consider  gain  when  he  is  making  bargains,  be- 
cause at  some  other  times  he  seems  not  to  value 
expense  ? 

If  not,  why  then  must  Philo  be  looked  upon 
as  not  at  all  influenced  by  a  sense  of  duty  in 
his  acts  of  charity,  because  at  some  other  times 
and  occasions  he  seems  not  to  be  governed  by  it. 

Our  present  state  is  a  state  of  great  weak- 
ness and  imperfection,  and  our  reason,  weak  as  , 
it  is,  has  a  thousand  impediments  to  hinder  and 
divert  its  force.  In  the  aifairs  of  civil  life  we 
are  neither  perfectly  wise  nor  wholly  foolish, 
and  we  are  almost  the  same  men  in  the  things 
that  relate  to  God.  In  some  instances  reason 
and  rehgion  get  more  power  over  us,  and  guide 
us  under  a  sense  of  duty  ;  whilst  in  other  parts 
of  our  life  it  may  be  very  apparent  that  reason 
has  a  less  share  in  our  actions. 

But  to  conclude  that  reason,  or  a  principle 
of  virtue,  does  not  influence  us  in  any  part  of 
our  behaviour,  because  it  does  not  act  equally 


46  REMARKS    ON    THE 

and  constantly  in  every  other  part  of  our  lives, 
is  as  absurd  as  to  affirm  that  we  do  not  tliink 
at  all  in  any  thing  that  we  do,  because  we  do 
not  think  with  the  same  exactness  or  attention 
in  every  thing  that  is  done  by  us. 

If  Philo  lives  in  the  neglect  or  violation  of 
some  duties,  this  shews  that  he  is  a  weak,  im- 
perfect man ;  but  it  does  not  shew  that  he  is 
the  same  weak  and  imperfect  man,  and  as  de- 
void of  any  principle  of  virtue,  when  he  does 
his  duty,  as  when  he  neglects  it :  for  it  is  as 
possible  for  him  to  be  charitable  upon  a  princi- 
ple of  duty,  and  yet  fail  in  some  other  respects, 
as  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  use  his  reason  in 
some  things,  and  not  in  others  ;  or  to  reason 
right  in  some  points,  and  yield  to  folly  in  others. 

So  that  to  impute  actions  seemingly  vir- 
tuous solely  to  natural  temj^er,  or  complexion, 
or  some  other  blind  motive,  because  the  man  is 
not  uniform  in  his  hfe,  is  groundless  and  absurd : 
all  that  can  with  any  truth  be  affirmed  of  such 
a  man  is  this,  that  he  is  not  uniform  in  his 
actions,  and  that,  through  some  mistake  or  neg- 
ligence, he  is  not  so  careful  of  his  duty  in  some 
respects  as  in  others. 

Our  understanding  and  reason,  even  in 
matters  of  mere  speculation,  are  well  nigh  as 
weak  and  inconstant  as  in  points  of  duty  and 
conscience. 

Few   systems   of   philosophy   but   obtrude 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  47 

some  errors  upon  us  with  as  much  assurance 
as  they  affirm  the  truth  :  Descartes  asserted 
a  plenum ;  Sir  Isaac  Newton  has  proved  a 
vacuum. 

Now,  will  any  one  say  that  it  was  not  the 
reason  or  understanding  of  Descartes  that  de- 
monstrated so  many  solid  truths,  because  he 
yielded  to  falsity  and  error  in  the  doctrine  of 
a  j^^^i^um  ?  Yet  it  would  be  much  more  rea- 
sonable to  affirm  tliis,  in  matters  of  mere  specu- 
lation, than  to  affirm  that,  in  points  of  practice 
and  duty,  a  man  is  in  no  actions  governed 
by  reason  and  principle,  because  in  some  in- 
stances he  acts  weakly,  and  not  according  to 
reason. 

For,  produce  but  the  true  reason  why  a 
philosopher  may  be  said  to  proceed  in  some 
speculations  according  to  strict  reason  and  truth, 
and  yet  hold  some  tenets  contrary  to  them,  and 
then  you  will  shew  that  it  is  possible,  nay, 
highly  probable,  that  a  man  may,  in  some 
points  of  duty,  act  upon  a  principle  of  reason 
and  virtue,  though  in  some  things  he  may  swerve 
from  them. 

There  is,  I  acknowledge,  a  great  difference 
in  bodily  temperaments,  so  that  one  man  may 
be  born  with  better  dispositions  for  the  practice 
of  some  virtues  than  others,  yet  it  is  reason 
within  that  is  the  chief  principle  that  actuates 
all  of  them ;   for  the  finest  spirits  are  tilings 


48  REMARKS    ON    THE 

as  blind  and  senseless  of  themselves  as  the 
hands  and  feet,  or  the  grosser  parts  of  the 
body. 

Wit  and  understanding  depend  much  upon 
bodily  temperaments  ;  yet  who  is  so  weak  as  to 
imagine  that  therefore  the  reason  of  the  mind 
has  no  share  in  arts  and  sciences  ? 

It  is  the  same  in  virtue,  or  at  least,  as  to 

some  particular  virtues ;  there  may  be  a  kind 

disposition  in  the  animal  spirits  to  produce  them, 

[but  it  is  great  weakness  to  suppose  that  reason 

land  judgment  have  no  part  in  them. 

It  is  impossible  for  our  stinted  capacities  to 
explain  or  calculate  the  exact  powers  that  are 
to  be  attributed  to  our  souls  and  bodies  in  the 
performance  of  actions,  because  we  have  no  clear 
ideas  of  them ;  but  we  know  enough  to  affirm 
the  united  operation  of  both,  and  to  shew  that 
he  reasons  falsely  who  would  ascribe  an  action 
wholly  to  the  body,  because  it  appears  to  have 
some  share  in  it ;  because,  supposing  it  to  take 
its  rise  wholly  from  reason,  the  union  of  the 
soul  and  body  requires  that  the  body  should 
appear  to  have  the  same  part  in  the  production 
of  the  action. 

There  are  nothing  more  various,  impercepti- 
ble, or  more  out  of  our  sight,  than  the  motives 
of  human  actions.  We  know  no  more  how  ar- 
guments and  ojnnions  act  upon  the  mind,  or  how 
far  they  contribute  to  our  choice,  than  we  can 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  49 

tell  how  far  the  air,  and  how  far  the  sun,  ope- 
rates in  the  growth  of  plants. 

When  a  freethinker  asserts  that  our  re- 
ligious belief  and  persuasions  are  not  at  all 
the  causes  of  human  actions,  he  proceeds  upon 
as  good  grounds  as  if  he  had  said  that  air  is  not 
at  all  the  cause  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 

For  it  is  as  easy  to  shew  that  air  has  no 
influence  upon  our  bodies,  as  that  reason  and 
opinions  have  no  power  over  our  minds. 

And  it  is  more  possible  to  tell  how  far  the 
fluids,  and  how  far  the  solids,  in  an  human 
body,  contribute  to  bodily  action,  than  it  is  to 
affirm  how  far  opinions  and  judgments,  and  how 
far  temp>er  and  complexion,  operate  in  human 
actions. 

Nay,  these  gentlemen  themselves,  to  make 
their  philosophy  still  more  ridiculous,  are  fre- 
quently wondering  at  the  strange  and  monstrous 
contradictions  which  they  think  they  cUscover 
in  human  nature. 

As  if  they  should  say,  that  fincUng  human 
nature  to  be  unaccountable,  they  therefore  take 
upon  them  to  give  certain  and  positive  accounts 
of  its  manner  of  acting. 

I  shall  be  pardoned  for  insisting  so  long 
upon  this  article,  because  it  is  that  on  wliich 
some  celebrated  wits  have  spent  so  much  pains, 
to  the  prejudice  of  rehgion  and  morality.  It 
is  not  easy  to  imagine  the  fatal  cftccts  that 
4 


50  REMARKS    ON    THE 

Mr  Bayle's  and  Esprit's  writings  have  had 
upon  people's  minds,  by  denying  the  power  of 
reason  and  religion,  and  ascribing  all  human 
actions  to  coinplexion,  natural  temper,  &c. 

It  is  an  easy  thing  to  be  a  wit,  and  a  jM- 
losopher,  if  you  will  but  write  against  religion 
and  virtue ;  for  I  need  not  say  all  arguments, 
but  all  fancies,  are  admitted  as  demonstrations 
on  that  side  ;  and  the  bolder  steps  you  take, 
the  surer  you  are  of  being  esteemed  a  genius. 

Had  Mr  Bayle  filled  his  books  with  the 
most  useful,  noble  truths,  he  had  not  had  half 
so  many  admirers,  as  for  one  single  sentence 
which  the  most  thoughtless  rake  might  have 
said  through  the  mere  assurance  of  his  own  ex- 
travagancies. 

Speaking  of  fornication,  I  question,  says 
he,  whether  one  man  in  a  hundred  is  clear  of 
the  guilt. 

Could  he  have  said  a  more  extravagant 
thing,  that  had  reflected  more  upon  morality 
and  the  power  of  religion,  he  had  still  been 
more  admired.  It  is  thus  that  Mr  Bayle  and 
Esprit  have  purchased  the  esteem  and  increased 
the  numbers  of  infidels  and  libertines. 

These  gentlemen  are  dead,  and  their  ashes 
safe,  if  the  death  of  men  implies  no  more  than 
the  fall  of  leaves. 

AYhat  reasons  you  have  to  appear  in  the 
same  cause  of  immorality,  or  what  security  you 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  51 

have  against  the  power  of  God,  is,  I  dare  saj, 
not  known  to  yourself. 

Infidehty  and  irrcHgion  have  few  topics  for 
reflection ;  they  have  not  so  much  as  one  argu- 
ment on  their  side. 

You  can  no  more  shew  that  you  are  not 
immortal,  than  you  can  shew  what  was  doing 
before  the  creation  of  the  world. 

To  fancy  that  all  expires  with  the  body,  is 
as  well  supported  as  if  you  was  to  fancy  that 
there  are  no  beino's  but  what  are  visible  to  vour 
eyes.  To  suppose  that  man  will  never  be  called 
to  an  account,  is  as  much  to  be  depended  upon, 
as  if  you  supposed  that  there  will  be  nothing  in 
being  a  thousand  years  hence. 

Yet  these  are  the  st7^ong  foundations  of 
infidelity  and  profaneness ;  these  are  the  solid 
principles  upon  which  great  jyhilosophers  esta- 
blish deluded  (or  as  they  call  themselves)  yree- 
t1  linkers. 

A  revelation  from  God,  that  justifies  itself 
from  the  creation  of  the  world  ;  that  tells  you 
every  truth  that  a  wise  man  would  be  glad  to 
hear ;  that  is  supported  with  all  the  authority 
that  an  omnipotent  God  can  give  ;  that  is  con- 
firmed with  all  the  assurance  that  human  testi- 
mony can  afford,  is  of  no  weight  against  a  few 
bold  assertions  of  weak  mortals,  who  exceed 
their  fellow-creatures  only  in  arrogance  and 
presumption. 


52  REMARKS    ON    THE 


SECTION  III. 

One  would  imagine,  by  what  has  already 
passed,  that  you  had  sufficiently  vented  your 
passion  upon  moral  virtue,  and  that  you  had 
hardly  any  more  arrows  to  draw  against  it ;  but 
you  proceed  to  shew  us  that  however  you  may 
fail  in  argument,  you  will  never  be  wanting  in 
inclination  to  attack  it. 

I  You  set  yourself  with  an  air  of  satisfaction, 
as  if  morahty  and  religion  lay  at  your  feet,  to 
\examine  into  the  pulchrum  and  honestum  of  the 
\  ancients ;  that  is,  to  enquire  whether  there  be 
I  any  real  excellence  or  worth  in  things,  a  pre- 
I  eminence  of  one  thing  above  another^. 

And  to  shew  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
any  real  worth  or  excellence  in  things  or 
actions,  but  that  all  is  mere  whim  and  fancy, 
you  proceed  thus : 

In  the  works  of  nature  woi^th  and  excel- 
lence are  as  uncertain.  How  whimsical  is  the 
florist !  sometimes  the  tulip,  sometimes  the  au- 
ricula, shall  engross  his  esteem.  What  mortal 
can  decide  which  is  the  handsomest,  abstract 
from  the  mode  in  being,  to  wear  great  buttons 
or  small  ones^. 

In  morals,  say  you,  there  is  no  greater 
certainty^. 

'  p.  373.  -  p.  377.  ^  p.  379. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  5o 

So  that,  according  to  your  philosophy,  he 
who  prefers  equity  to  injustice  is  but  hke  him 
that  chooses  a  great  button  rather  than  a  small 
one ;  and  he  who  prefers  fideHty  to  falseness,  as 
whimsical  as  the  florist  who  admires  the  auri- 
cula more  than  the  tulijy. 

Now  if  there  be  only  this  difference  between 
actions,  then  there  can  be  no  greater  difference 
between  agents ;  the  best  of  men  can  only  excel 
the  vilest  of  their  race  as  a  tulip  may  excel  an 
auricula. 

Nay,  if  truth  and  falsehood  be  no  otherwise 
different  from  one  another  than  as  one  button 
differs  from  another,  then  it  must  follow  that 
there  can  be  no  greater  difference  between  the 
author  of  the  one  and  the  author  of  the  other. 

Now,  the  rehgion  of  our  country  tells  us 
that  God  is  truth,  and  the  devil  the  author  of 
lies. 

This,  sir,  you  see  is  the  direct,  immediate 
blasphemy  of  your  notions,  and  not  drawn  from 
them  by  any  distant  or  remote  consequences. 

And  if  I  should  ask  you  why  one  should 
be  worshipped  rather  than  the  other,  I  should 
puzzle  your  profound  philosophy  as  much  as  if 
I  asked  you  which  was  the  finest  flower ;  for 
you  cannot  tell  me  that  one  of  these  beings  is 
really  good,  and  the  other  really  evil,  and  yet 
maintain  that  there  is  no  real  goodness  in  truth, 
nor  any  real  evil  in  lies  and  falsehood.  j 


54  REMARKS    ON    THE 

It  is  utterly  impossible  to  answer  this  ques- 
tion, without  giving  up  your  uncertainty  in 
morals,  and  allowing  that  there  is  something 
certain  and  immutable  in  the  worth  and  excel- 
lence of  things  and  actions. 

Should  any  one  charge  you  with  the  gross- 
est villanies  and  most  flagrant  immoralities  that 
ever  were  committed  by  man,  you  could  have  no 
more  pretence  to  be  angry  at  the  imputation 
than  if  he  had  said  you  was  particularly  fond 
of  little  buttons. 

To  proceed:  which  is  the  best  religion, 
say  you,  is  a  question  that  has  caused  more 
mischief  than  all  other  questions  together^. 

Religion  never  comes  in  your  way  but  it 
puts  you  in  a  passion ;  though  I  dare  say  you 
never  had  any  harm  by  it  in  your  life.  This 
is  a  heavy  charge  upon  religion,  and  upon  the 
best  religion,  for  that  is  it  which  is  enquired 
after.  You  charge  a  great  deal  of  mischief  to 
this  enquiry  after  the  best  religion,  on  purpose 
to  enhance,  I  suppose,  your  own  merit,  that  you 
may  appear  to  do  a  more  pubhc  good,  who  en- 
deavour to  destroy  the  very  idea  of  it. 

But  as  mischievous  as  you  reckon  this  en- 
quiry to  be,  I  am  of  another  opinion,  taken 
from  him  who  made  the  enquiry  necessary, 
who  is  God  himself. 

Thou  shalt  have  no  other  God  besides  me, 
'  p.  379. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  55 

was  setting  up  the  best  religion  ;  and  thou  shall 
not  make  to  thyself  any  graven  image,  &c.  was 
a  determination  against  paganism.  Now  I  look 
upon  the  best  rehgion  to  be  a  matter  of  great 
moment,  because  God  has  commanded  it ;  and 
take  the  enquiry  after  it  to  be  well  authorised, 
because  God  has  forbid  all  false  worship. 

If  you  like  it  the  worse  for  having  this  au- 
thority, and  should  be  better  pleased  with  religion, 
if  it  was  some  politician's  invention,  I  shall  only 
say,  that  you  are  fonder  of  cheats  than  I  am. 

Again,  I  do  not  allow  myself  to  be  angry 
at  the  enquiry  after  the  best  rehgion,  because  I 
find  that  our  blessed  Saviour  came  into  the 
world  to  teach  men  the  best  rehgion,  and  with 
the  highest  rewards  and  punishments  to  persuade 
men  to  seek  after  and  embrace  it.  This  is  life 
eternal,  to  know  thee,  the  only  true  God,  and 
Jesus  Clirist  whom  thou  hast  sent.  And  again. 
Go  ye  and  teach  all  nations,  baptizing  them  in 
the  name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son,  and 
of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  and  lo,  I  am  ivith  you 
alway,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world. 

This  convinces  me,  that  the  enquiry  after 
the  best  religion  is  the  noblest,  the  most  happy, 
and  beneficial  of  all  other,  because  it  is  an  en- 
quiry after  eternal  happiness :  but  since  you 
take  it  to  have  done  more  mischief  than  all  other 
enquiries,  you  know  now  where  to  charge  it; 
you  know  who  it  was  that  sent  twelve  apostles, 


56  REMARKS    ON    THE 

endued  with  resistless  power,  to  persuade  all  the 
nations  of  the  world  to  enquire  after,  and  re- 
ceive the  one  best  rehgion.  "Ask  it,  say  you, 
{i.  e.  wliich  is  the  best  religion)  at  Peking,  at 
Constantinople,  at  Rome,  and  you  will  receive 
three  distinct  answers,  extremely  different  from 
one  another,  yet  all  of  them  equally  positive 
and  peremptory.  Christians  are  well  assured 
of  the  falsity  of  the  Pagan  and  Mahometan 
suiter stitio7is ;  hut  enquire  of  the  several  sects 
they  are  divided  into,  which  is  the  true  church 
of  Christ,  and  all  of  them  will  tell  you  it  is 
theirs^. 

Then  comes  your  golden  conclusion.  It 
is  manifest,  then,  that  the  hunting  after  this 
pulchrum  a7id  honestum,  is  not  much  better  than 
a  wild-goose  chase,  &c. 

Here  I  observe  that,  very  consistently  indeed 
with  yourself,  having  rejected  all  moral  virtue 
and  natural  religion,  you  treat  revelation  in  the 
same  manner.  Christianity  and  paganism  are 
put  upon  the  same  foot,  and  the  enquiry  which 
is  the  best,  esteemed  no  better  than  a  wild- 
goose  chase,  &c.  Is  this  declaration  of  yours 
the  effect  of  a  serious  enquiry  into  the  merits  of 
different  rehgions  ?  That  cannot  be ;  it  refxocts 
too  much  upon  so  fine  an  understanding  as  yours 
to  suppose  that  you  could  ever  have  been  seri- 
ously chasing  of  wild  geese. 

^  p.  879. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  57 

The  acuteness  of  your  parts  must  have 
always  prevented  the  enquiry.  You  knew,  I 
suppose,  ah  origine,  from  your  cradle,  that  there 
was  no  God,  or  you  could  not  have  been  always 
so  clear  about  the  insignificance  of  any  religion. 
For  if  there  be  a  God,  it  is  more  than  probable 
that  he  is  to  be  worshipped,  and  it  is  hardly  to 
be  supposed  that  all  ways  of  worship  are  equally 
acceptable  to  him. 

You  represent  the  enquiry  after  the  best 
religion  as  a  mere  ivild-goose  chase,  because,  if 
the  question  is  put  at  Peking,  Constantinople,  or 
amongst  the  various  sects  of  Christians,  all  of 
them  claim  the  only  true  worship. 

Now,  sir,  I  will  remove  the  question  from  the 
disciples  and  followers  to  the  authors  of  these 
rehgions.  You  shall  put  the  question  thus.  Ask 
Jesus,  ask  Mahomet,  ask  some  Pagan  impostor, 
and  you  will  receive  three  distinct  answers,  ex- 
tremely different  from  one  another,  and  yet 
equally  positive  and  peremptory. 

Will  you  stand  to  your  conclusion  here,  that 
therefore  it  is  madness  to  concern  ourselves 
more  about  the  one  than  the  other  ? 

Is  there  any  creature  so  absurd  as  to  tliink 
this  an  argument  against  Christ,  or  that  the 
enquiry  after  him  is  folly,  because  there  was 
one  ^lahomet  called  for  disciples  ? 

Yet  the  argument  is  full  as  just  and  cogent 
against  Christ  himself  as  against  the   religion 


58  REMARKS    ON    THE 

which  he  has  instituted  ;  for  if  the  religion  of 
Christ  and  that  of  Mahomet  have  nothing  to 
distinguish  them,  and  Christianity  is  to  be  ridi- 
culed and  despised,  because  there  is  such  a 
religion  as  Mahometism,  then  it  undeniably 
follows,  that  Christ,  when  on  earth,  might  be 
justly  rejected,  because  there  have  been  other 
persons  who  have  pretended  to  come  from 
God. 

This  argument  of  yours  (if  it  proves  any 
thing)  proves  it  impossible  that  there  ever  should 
be  any  revelation  or  rehgion  from  God,  which 
mankind  would  be  obliged  to  receive,  so  long  as 
there  were  either  wicked  spirits  or  wicked  men 
in  the  world.  For  evil  spirits  and  evil  men  will 
have  evil  designs,  and  will  oppose  the  wisdom 
and  providence  of  God,  in  setting  u]3  ways  of 
religion  suitable  to  their  own  tempers  and  de- 
signs. But  according  to  your  argument,  no  re- 
hgion has  any  pretence  to  our  regard,  when 
once  it  is  opposed  ;  nor  need  we  trouble  our 
heads  about  the  truth  of  any,  because  there  is 
more  than  one  that  lays  claim  to  it,  which  is  as 
good  sense  as  if  you  was  to  affirm  that  a  lie 
was  a  demonstration  that  there  was  no  such 
thmg  as  truth. 

Whereas  the  very  possibility  of  a  false  re- 
ligion implies  the  possibihty  of  a  true  one,  as 
much  as  falsehood  implies  the  possibility  of 
truth,  or  wrong  supposes  right. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  59 

The  wisest  speech  therefore  that  you  can 
make  to  your  sagacious  followers  is  this  : 

•'  Gentlemen,  I  would  not  have  you  to  eat  or 
drink,  because  physicians  differ  very  much 
about  diet,  and  poisons  are  generally  conveyed 
that  way ;  nor  would  I  have  you  take  any 
money,  because  there  is  counterfeit  coin  in  the 
world. 

"There  are  a  great  many  false  accounts  of 
things ;  therefore  you  need  not,  nay,  ought  not, 
to  trouble  yourselves  about  any  that  are  true. 

"You  may  laugh  at  David,  when  he  says, 

TJie  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the 

fiynnament    sheiveth   his  handy-iuork ;  because 

there  is  a  contrary  opinion,   a  fool  that  hath 

said  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God. 

"  You  need  not  regard  Christianity  or  its 
divine  institution,  because  there  are  other  re- 
ligions at  Peking  and  Constantinople ;  nor  need 
you  worship  the  true  God,  because  in  Egypt 
they  worshipped  leeks  and  onions  ;  nay,  you 
need  not  hold  that  there  is  any  true  God,  be- 
cause there  are  people  who  have  invented  false 
deities. 

"  When  any  history  is  urged  upon  you,  you 
may  answer,  that  of  Robinson  Crusoe  is  called  a 
true  account ;  or  if  any  one  pretends  to  be  posi- 
tive on  the  side  of  virtue,  you  may  confute  his 
arrogance  by  saying,  it  can  never  be  proved 
that  the  auricula  exceeds  the  tulip. 


60  REMARKS    ON    THE 

"  These  are  strong  and  short  maxims,  which 
will  support  you  against  the  wisdom  of  all  ages; 
they  confute  whole  volumes  of  prophets  and 
apostles  with  a  word  speaking. 

"These  are  doctrines  that  require  no  study 
or  application,  and  you  may  believe  them  to  be 
proper  by  their  fitness  for  use.  You  may 
drink,  debauch,  eat,  and  sleep  as  you  please, 
without  hindering  your  progress  in  these  doc- 
trines. Luxury  and  wantonness  will  improve  your 
readiness ;  and  your  very  dulness  will  make  you 
more  acute. 

"Nay,  the  more  you  sink  into  sensuality  and 
the  animal  life,  the  more  you  will  feel  and  relish 
the  truth  of  these  sentiments.  Though  you  are 
to  fly  from  all  appearance  of  truth,  and  avoid 
all  concern  about  any  rehgion,  as  you  would 
avoid  the  folly  of  chasing  of  wild  geese ;  yet 
you  must  remember  that  you  are  my  scholars: 
for  I  am  an  abstract  thinker,  and  in  these  my 
abstract  speculations  you  must  be  my  diligent 
and  dutiful  scholars.  Though  Christianity  may 
be  despised,  because  other  rehgions  are  set  up 
against  it,  yet  you  must  value  me  the  more  for 
being  contrary  to  the  wisest  men  of  all  ages  in 
the  world. 

"Though  there  is  nothing  certain  or  valuable 
in  religious  truths,  though  moral  virtue  is  the 
offsjwing  of  pride,  the  invention  of  philosophers, 
and  all  mere  whim  and  fancy  ;  yet  my  specula- 


FABLE    OP    THE    BEES.  61 

tions  having  the  utmost  contrariety  to  all  that 
is  virtuous,  moral,  or  religious,  you  may  safely 
put  your  whole  trust  and  confidence  in  them." 

This  is  the  best  speech  that  you  can  pos- 
sibly make  to  your  deluded  followers  ;  and  I 
dare  say,  if  your  principles  would  allow  of 
greater  stupidity  or  dulness,  you  would  not 
be  without  a  party,  who,  to  avoid  salvation, 
would  join  with  an  enemy  to  virtue,  merely  for 
the  sake  of  his  cause. 

The  infidelity  of  the  present  age  is  very 
great,  and  shews  such  a  contempt  of  sacred 
things,  as  was  hardly  ever  heard  of  before. 

If  one  enquires  into  the  grounds  of  it,  it 
seems  founded  on  such  an  implicit  faith  reposed 
in  men  of  wanton  and  sensual  minds,  as  is 
looked  upon  to  be  mean  and  slavish,  when 
yielded  to  the  highest  evidence  in  matters  of 
the  last  moment. 

To  believe  Moses  and  the  prophets,  is 
ridiculed,  because  it  is  believing;  but  to  be 
a  slave  to  a  wanton  infidel,  and  blindly  swear 
into  his  opinions,  is  glorious  and  manly,  because 
it  is  free-thinking. 

Deists  and  freethinkers  are  generally  con- 
sidered as  unbelievers ;  but  upon  examination, 
they  will  appear  to  be  men  of  the  most  re- 
signed and  implicit  faith  in  the  world ;  they 
would  believe  ti^ansubstantiation,  but  that  it 
imphes  a  behoving  in  God ;  for  they  never  re- 


62  REMARKS    ON    THE 

sign  their  reason,  but  when  it  is  to  yield  to 
something  that  opposes  salvation. 

For  the  Deisfs  creed  has  as  many  articles 
as  the  Christian's,  and  requires  a  much  greater 
suspension  of  our  reason  to  believe  them.  So 
that  if  to  believe  things  upon  no  authority,  or 
without  any  reason,  be  an  argument  of  cre- 
dulity, the  freethinker  will  appear  to  be  the 
most  easy,  credulous  creature  alive.  In  the 
first  place,  he  is  to  believe  almost  all  the  same 
articles  to  be  false,  which  the  Christian  believes 
to  be  true. 

Now,  it  may  easily  be  shewn,  that  it  re- 
quires stronger  acts  of  faith  to  believe  these 
articles  to  be  false,  than  to  beheve  them  to  be 
true. 

For,  taking  faith  to  be  an  assent  of  the 
mind  to  some  proposition,  of  which  we  have 
no  certain  knowledge,  it  will  appear  that  the 
Deist's  faith  is  much  stronger,  and  has  more  of 
credulity  in  it  than  the  Christian's.  For  in- 
stance, the  Christian  believes  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead,  because  he  finds  it  supported  by  such 
evidence  and  authority  as  cannot  possibly  be 
higher,  supposing  the  thing  was  true ;  and  he 
does  no  more  violence  to  his  reason  in  believing; 
it,  than  in  supposing  that  God  may  intend  to 
do  some  things  which  the  reason  of  man  cannot 
conceive  how  they  will  be  effected. 

On  the  contrary,  the  Deist  believes  there 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  63 

will  be  no  resurrection.  And  how  great  is  his 
faith  !  for  he  pretends  to  no  evidence  or  au- 
thority to  support  it ;  it  is  a  pure  naked  assent 
of  his  mind  to  what  he  does  not  know  to  be 
true,  and  of  which  nobody  has  or  can  give  him 
any  full  assurance. 

So  that  the  difference  between  a  Christian 
and  a  Deist  does  not  consist  in  this,  that  the 
one  assents  to  things  unknown,  and  the  other 
does  not ;  but  in  this,  that  the  Christian  assents 
to  things  unknown,  on  the  account  of  evidence  ; 
the  other  assents  to  things  unknown,  without 
any  evidence  at  all. 

Which  shews  that  the  Christian  is  the 
rational  believer,  and  the  Deist  the  blind  bio-ot. 

Ask  a  Deist  or  freethinker,  why  he  be- 
lieves Christianity  to  be  an  imposture,  you  must 
not  expect  to  have  any  arguments  offered  you  ; 
but  however,  all  arguments  aside,  he  can  tell 
you,  that  the  enquiry  after  the  best  religion 
has  done  more  mischief  thsm  all  other  enquiries 
together  ;  that  it  is,  at  best,  but  a  luild-goose 
chase ;  he  will  tell  you  how  Jesus  has  been 
called  the  Galilean  by  way  of  contempt ;  that 
there  are  various  readings  in  the  scriptures ; 
that  Mr  Whiston  is  the  most  learned  and 
sincere  divine  of  the  age ;  that  he  has  called 
the  present  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  an  apostaci/; 
and  says  that  the  present  text  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  not  that  which  was  used  in  our 


64  REMARKS    ON    THE 

Saviour's  time :  he  may,  perhaps,  crack  a  jest 
upon  some  text  of  the  New  Testament,  and  tell 
you  how  such  a  one  used  to  say  that  ivorking 
a  miracle  was  like  shewing  a  trick. 

If  you  have  strength  enough  to  maintain 
your  ground  against  such  attacks  as  these,  the 
Deists  can  get  no  power  over  you  :  but  it  must 
be  confessed,  that  idle  and  foolish  as  these  arts 
appear  in  point  of  reason,  yet  they  are  very 
fatal  in  their  effects  upon  the  minds  of  men. 

Rehgion  requires  a  serious  and  wise  use  of 
our  reason,  and  can  only  recommend  itself  to 
us,  when  we  are  in  a  disposition  to  reason  and 
think  soberly ;  it  preserves  its  power  over  our 
minds  no  longer  than  wliilst  we  consider  it  as 
the  most  serious,  important,  and  sacred  thing 
in  the  world. 

Hence  it  appears  why  we  are  generally 
so  little  affected  with  religion,  because  we  are 
seldom  in  a  state  of  sober  thinking.  The  con- 
cerns of  the  world  keep  our  spirits  in  a  con- 
stant hurry,  and  prevent  our  judging  rightly 
of  those  things  which  are  not  to  be  judged  of 
but  by  cool  reason. 

Every  one  knows  that  sickness,  adversity, 
and  the  approach  of  death,  are  advantageous 
seasons  for  the  truths  of  religion  to  affect  us ; 
whereas  they  carry  no  other  advantage  than  as 
they  bring  a  man  into  such  a  state  as  disposes 
him  to  think  seriously.     For  this  reason  they 


FABLE    OF    THE     BEES.  65 

who  only  laugh  at  religion,  may  be  said  to 
have  used  the  strongest  argument  against  it, 
for  there  is  no  coming  at  it  any  other  way  ;  it 
is  only  to  be  attacked  by  little  jests,  lewd  flings 
of  wit,  such  as  may  betray  the  mind  into  levity, 
and  corrupt  the  imagination,  which  so  far  as 
it  is  eifected,  so  far  is  the  power  of  rehgion 
lessened. 

It  is  not  the  Deist's  business  to  reason  so- 
berly, and  consider  the  weight  and  moment  of 
things  with  exactness ;  for,  to  reason  soberly,  is 
to  act  against  himself,  and  put  his  reader  into 
that  state  of  mind  in  which  religion  has  its 
chief  force. 

But  idle  stories  about  gods  and  goddesses, 
and  pagan  mysteries,  saucy  jests,  lewd  inuendos, 
and  nick-names  given  to  serious  things,  serve 
the  cause  of  infidelity  much  better  than  any 
arguments  it  has  yet  found  out. 

For  these  not  only  serve  to  confound  and 
distract  the  mind,  and  lessen  the  difference  of 
things,  but  they  also  gratify  and  engage  the 
most  immoral  and  wicked  men,  as  they  furnish 
them  with  a  confutation  of  religion  at  so  cheap 
a  rate. 

How  many  fine  gentlemen  must  have  been 
forced  to  have  owned  themselves  Christians,  had 
not  such  short  confutations  of  Christianity  been 
provided  to  their  hands !  But  as  the  cause  is 
now  managed,  no  one  can  be  too  dull,  senseless, 
5 


B6  REMARKS    ON    THE 

or  debauched,  to  be  a  powerful  Deist ;  a  poor 
inflamed  wretch,  who  never  had  the  use  of  his 
reason  in  his  life,  may  easily  call  reHgion  a  Dul- 
cinea  del  Tohosa,  and  all  who  would  procure 
any  regard  to  it,  Saint  Errants ;  and  when  he 
has  done  this,  he  may  reckon  liimself  a  great 
genius,  and  to  have  shewn  as  much  learning  in 
favour  of  Deism  as  the  first-rate  infidel  of  the 
age. 

How  many  lively  beaux  had  buried  their 
parts  in  swearing  and  obscenity,  had  not  all 
jests  upon  Scripture  been  allowed  as  true  proofs 
of  Deism  and  pohteness ! 

And  though  the  fraternity  now  boasts  of 
its  numbers  (as  every  vice  if  it  could  speak  might 
do  the  same),  yet,  if  no  one  was  to  be  allowed 
to  be  a  Deist  till  he  had  examined  the  truths 
and  authority  of  religion,  as  he  would  examine 
the  title  to  an  estate,  even  the  present  age 
would  be  able  to  shew  more  squarers  of  the 
circle,  or  discoverers  of  the  longitude,  than  pro- 
fessors of  Deism. 

Nay,  was  one  to  ask  the  most  pliilosophical 
amongst  them  to  shew  the  great  danger  of 
being  a  good  Christian,  or  the  fatal  consequences 
of  living  in  expectation  of  the  resurrection,  and 
judgment  to  come ;  was  he  asked  to  shew  the 
certain  safety  of  infidelity,  or  why  an  infidel 
can  be  no  sufferer  for  rejecting  the  offers  of  the 
gospel,  he  could  give  you  as  plain  an  answer 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  67 

as  if  you  had  asked  what  state  this  globe  of 
earth  will  be  in  five  thousand  years  hence. 

But  indeed  it  seems  needless  to  observe  that 
prudence  and  common  sense  have  no  hand  in 
infidelity.  Self-murder  does  not  more  directly 
prove  lunacy  than  infidehty  proves  the  loss  of 
reason. 

There  is  no  one  that  seems  more  to  depend 
upon  the  folly  and  madness  of  his  readers  than 
you  do. 

You  tell  them  that  you  are  a  mere  animal, 
governed  by  appetites  over  which  you  have  no 
power  ;  that  is,  you  describe  yourself  as  a  ma- 
chine that  would  look  well  in  a  bridle,  and  then 
pretend  to  talk  of  God,  and  providence,  and  re- 
ligion and  morality,  and  to  pierce  into  the  in- 
most nature  of  things  and  actions,  with  as  much 
ease  as  if  you  was  some  superior  form  that  was 
made  up  of  pure  wisdom  and  intelHgence. 

But  the  thing  is,  you  knew  what  side  you 
had  chosen,  and  that  if  you  was  not  wanting  in 
impiety,  lewdness,  and  reproaches  upon  virtue, 
you  might  abound  in  nonsense  as  much  as  you 
pleased. 

And  indeed  it  must  be  confessed,  that  as 
hardly  any  authority  is  sufficient  to  recommend 
a  person  that  comes  from  God  to  do  us  good ;  so 
is  there  scarce  any  folly  great  enough  to  expose 
another  that  comes  a  missioner  from  the  kino-dom 
of  darkness  to  do  us  harm. 

5—2 


68  REMARKS    ON    THE 

SECTION  IV. 

You  are  at  last  so  sensible  of  the  abilities 
which  you  have  discovered  in  laying  open  the 
mysteries  of  human  nature,  that  you  think  it 
but  a  necessary  piece  of  civility  to  make  an 
apology  to  the  world  for  shewing  such  a  supe- 
rior knowledge.      Thus  say  you  : 

What  hurt  do  I  do  to  man,  if  I  mahe  him 
more  known  to  himself  than  he  was  before  ? 

But  we  are  so  desperately  in  love  ivith 
flattery,  that  lue  can  never  relish  a  truth  that 
is  mortifying. 

To  prove  the  justice  of  this  remark,  you  say, 
/  do  not  believe  the  immoi^tality  of  the  soid 
would  even  have  found  so  general  a  reception  in 
human  capacities  as  it  has,  had  it  not  been  a 
]:> leasing  one,  that  extolled  and  was  a  compli- 
ment to  the  whole  species  \ 

This  remark  supposes  that  the  mortality  of 
the  soul  is  a  truth,  for  you  make  our  not  be- 
lieving it  to  be  mortal  a  proof  that  we  cannot 
reUsh  a  truth  that  is  mortifying.  You  also 
impute  our  opinion  of  the  soul's  immortahty  to 
a  desperate  love  of  flattery,  which  is  giving  it 
as  sure  a  mark  of  an  error  as  you  could  well 
have  thought  of. 

The  reasonableness  of  this  remark  is  founded 
upon  that  advantage  and  dignity    which  arise 

1  p.  256. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  69 

from  immortality  ;  this  is  wliat  induces  you  to 
think  that  its  reception  in  human  capacities  is 
owing  to  a  love  of  flattery. 

You  mio:ht  have  made  the  same  remark 
upon  the  belief  of  the  being  and  providence  of 
God,  that  they  had  never  had  so  general  a 
reception  in  human  capacities,  were  not  men 
desperately  in  love  with  flattery,  and  not  able 
to  relish  a  truth  that  is  mortifying. 

For  the  being  and  providence  of  God  are 
the  most  pleasing  truths,  and  more  extol  and 
elevate  man's  nature  and  condition  than  any- 
thing else  ;  and  whilst  we  assert  the  providence 
of  God,  we  assert  our  own  happiness,  as  being 
the  care  and  concern  of  so  great  and  glorious  a 
nature. 

But  how  ouo'ht  that  man  to  be  treated  who 
should  bring  the  belief  of  a  divine  being  as  an 
instance  of  the  power  of  flattery  over  human 
nature,  or  allege  the  doctrine  of  providence  as 
a  proof  that  we  cannot  relish  a  truth  that  is 
mortifying  ? 

Yet  tliis  would  be  as  well  as  to  instance,  as 
you  have  done,  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
For  it  is  as  reasonable  to  rejoice  in  the  immor- 
tality of  our  souls,  as  in  the  being  of  God ;  and 
it  is  as  impious  to  say  that  we  hold  its  immor- 
tality, because  we  cannot  relish  a  truth  that  is 
mortifying,  as  to  say  that  we  believe  the  provi- 
dence of  God  for  the  same  rqason. 


70  BEMAKKS    ON    THE 

What  an  aversion  must  you  have  to  the 
force  of  this  principle,  that  when  you  was  to 
shew  that  we  cannot  rehsh  a  truth  that  is  mor- 
tifying, you  could  like  no  instance  so  well  as  the 
general  disbelief  of  the  soul's  mortality  ?  Can 
it  be  supposed  that  you  would  have  instanced 
in  this  opinion,  if  you  had  not  wished  that  it 
should  lose  its  force  upon  men's  minds,  and  be 
no  longer  considered  as  the  corner  stone  of  re- 
ligion, but  as  a  notion  founded  in  the  falseness, 
pride,  and  flattery  of  man's  nature  ? 

Was  any  one  ever  so  angry  at  the  Mace- 
donian hero's  vanity  of  being  a  god  ?  need  he 
have  reproached  him  more  than  by  imputing  it 
to  a  desperate  love  of  flattery  ? 

Yet  this  is  the  tender  method  in  which  you 
have  chose  to  expose  the  behef  of  the  soul's  im- 
mortality as  owing  to  a  desperate  love  of  flat- 
tery. 

You  will  perhaps  say,  Have  I  denied  the 
souVs  immortality  ? 

In  express  terms  you  have  not  denied  it ; 
such  a  flat  denial  would  have  signified  much  less 
than  what  you  have  said. 

You  knew  very  well  that  to  impute  the 
belief  of  it  to  falseness  and  flattery,  was  the  best 
way  of  denying  it. 

It  is  rejected  here  in  a  manner  that  highly 
suits  the  temper  of  irreligion,  by  being  considered 
not  only  as  false,  b,ut  as  arising  from  the  basest 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  71 

qualities  of  human  nature,  ^:)riV?e  and  a  desperate 
love  of  flattery. 

These  things  serve  not  only  to  raise  a  dis- 
belief, but  to  excite  an  indignation  against  a 
principle  owing  to  such  reproachful  causes ;  and, 
what  is  still  a  greater  point  gained,  they  teach 
people  to  look  with  contempt  and  dislike  on 
those  persons  and  that  religion  which  teach 
such  a  principle. 

Our  blessed  Saviour  saith,  /  avd  the  resur- 
rection and  the  life^  he  that  helieveth  in  me  shall 
never  die. 

Now,  according  to  your  philosophy,  this 
speech  of  our  Saviour's  must  be  reckoned  an 
artful  apphcation  to  the  weakness  and  vanity  of 
human  nature,  an  address  to  the  blind  side  of 
man  to  increase  his  love  of  flattery,  and  keep 
him  from  a  true  knowledge  of  himself. 

For  if  man  believes  the  immortality  of  his 
soul,  through  a  desperate  love  of  flattery,  cer- 
tainly he  who  comes  to  encourage  and  establish 
such  a  behef,  comes  to  encourage  and  estabhsh 
that  immoderate  love  of  flattery. 

Nay,  this  doctrine  of  yours  not  only  serves 
to  expose  the  opinion  of  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  and  reproaches  the  Christian  religion  which 
teaches  it,  but  it  prepares  a  man  to  be  proof 
against  all  doctrines  of  rehgion  that  have  any 
happiness  in  them ;  for  whatever  is  believed  or 
practised  that  tends  any  way  to  raise  or  exalt 


fi^ 


72  REMARKS    ON    THE 

the  condition  of  man,  is  equally  subject  to  this 
reproach,  that  it  is  received  through  an  exces- 
sive fondness  of  flattery. 

So  that  your  wise  philosophy  comes  to 
this,  that  if  there  was  no  honour  or  happi- 
ness in  rehgion,  no  greatness  to  be  acquired  by 
our  obeying  God,  it  could  not  be  charged  upon 
our  pride  and  vanity ;  but  since  religion  is  in 
order  to  happiness,  and  since  our  worshipping 
of  God  implies  our  having  a  great  and  glorious 
friend  and  benefactor,  such  a  religion  may  be 
owing  to  a  vice  of  our  nature,  a  desperate  love 
of  flattery. 

And  the  same  may  be  said  of  every  virtuous 
action,  that  it  is  practised  through  a  desperate 
love  of  flattery,  inasmuch  as  virtue  is  supposed 
to  make  us  friends  and  favourites  of  God,  and 
so  dio'nifies  and  exalts  our  state. 

Nay,  this  way  of  arguing  proves,  that  the 
greater  and  more  glorious  the  idea  is  which  we 
form  of  God,  the  more  we  may  be  influenced  by 
an  ill  motive  ;  for  the  greater  and  more  glorious 
we  represent  the  nature  of  God,  the  more  we 
raise  and  dignify  ourselves,  who  are  related  to 
so  great  a  being,  and  are  in  covenant  with 
him. 

So  that  to  clear  ourselves  of  a  desperate 
love  of  flattery,  and  to  shew  that  we  can  relish 
truths  that  are  mortifying,  we  should  conceive 
very  low  and  mean  notions  of  God,  and  such  as 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  78 

would  make  it  neither  our  honour  nor  happi- 
ness to  worship  him. 

Such  a  rehgion  as  this,  that  had  nothing 
in  it  worthy  of  God  or  men,  might,  according 
to  your  account,  be  owing  to  some  rational 
principle,  and  not  capable  of  being  imputed  to 
the  pride  or  vanity  of  man's  nature. 

For  since  you  impute  the  behef  of  the  soul's 
immortality  to  a  desperate  love  of  flattery,  be- 
cause such  belief  sets  us  out  to  great  advantage, 
and  adds  dignity  to  our  nature,  the  same  impu- 
tation is  equally  chargeable  upon  every  doctrine 
or  practice  that  promises  any  happiness  or 
honour  to  us  ;  and  no  religion  or  opinions  can 
be  free  from  that  charge  but  such  as  are  of 
no  benefit  or  advantage  to  us. 

From  this  therefore  we  may  beheve,  that 
had  we  a  rehgion  which  proposed  nothing 
worthy  of  God,  or  beneficial  to  man,  the  Deists 
and  wits  of  your  size  would  all  of  them  turn 
priests,  and  devoutly  wait  at  its  altars. 

To  speak  now  a  word  or  two  concerning 
pride. 

Pride  is  an  error  or  a  vice,  as  covetous- 
ness  is  a  vice  ;  it  is  a  notable  desire,  ill  directed : 
it  is  a  right  desire  earnestly  to  desire  happi- 
ness, but  that  desire  is  sinful  when  it  is  wholly 
set  upon  gold,  or  any  other  ^a^^e  good. 

So  a  desire  of  greatness  is  an  excellent  de- 
sire, a  right  turn   of  mind;   but  when  it  fixes 


^^^-A^.V'tcr 


74  REMARKS    ON    THE 

upon  a  false  honour,  it  is  a  vicious  irregularity. 
To  desire  the  highest  exaltation  of  which  our 
nature  is  capable,  is  as  right  a  disposition  as  to 
desire  to  be  as  hke  to  God  as  we  can. 

Now,  had  you  said  that  the  belief  of  the 
soul's  immortahty  was  assisted  and  strengthened 
in  us  through  a  desire  of  greatness,  you  had 
said  as  reasonable  a  thing  as  to  say,  that  Chris- 
tianity makes  a  stronger  impression  upon  the 
minds  of  men  through  a  desire  of  happiness. 

For  had  we  not  these  dispositions,  neither 
rehgion,  nor  anything  else  that  was  of  any 
advantage  to  us,  could  take  any  hold  of  us : 
for  what  would  the  happiness  or  greatness  of 
any  proposal  signify  to  beings  whose  natures 
were  not  affected  with  them  ? 

Now,  to  say  that  religion  is  better  received 
through  this  tendency  of  our  nature,  is  no  more 
a  reproach,  than  it  is  to  say  that  our  under- 
standing and  reason  recommend  religion  to  us. 

For  these  dispositions  or  inclinations  consti- 
tute the  excellence  of  our  nature,  and  give  us 
all  the  dignity  that  we  have :  it  being  as  right 
a  judgment  of  the  mind,  to  desire  to  be  as  like 
to  God  as  our  natures  will  allow,  as  it  is  to 
prefer  truth  to  falsehood. 

But  to  impute  our  belief  of  the  immortality 
of  the  soul  to  i^^ide,  is  as  ridiculous  as  to  impute 
cm*  desire  of  eternal  happiness  to  avarice. 

For  py^ide,  considered  as  a  vice,  is  no  more 


FABLE    OF    THE     EEES.  7o 


the  cause  of  our  approbation  of  immortality, 
than  avarice  is  the  cause  of  our  setting  our 
affection  on  things  above. 

Pride  is  as  earthly  and  down-looking  a  vice 
as  covetousness,  and  as  truly  sinks  the  soul  into 
a  state  of  meanness. 

A  delight  in  false  honour  as  much  debases 
and  hinders  the  mind  from  aspiring  after  its 
true  greatness,  as  a  fondness  for  empty  riches 
keeps  the  soul  averse  from  the  approbation  of 
her  true  good.  That  this  is  the  effect  of  pride, 
that  it  debases  the  mind,  and  makes  it  unable 
to  relish  its  true  greatness ;  that  it  unfits  it  for 
the  reception  of  doctrines  which  exalt  and  raise 
our  nature,  may  be  also  learnt  from  him  who 
came  to  lead  us  unto  all  truth. 

Speaking  of  vain-glorious  men,  says  our 
blessed  Saviour,  How  can  ye  believe,  which 
receive  honour  one  of  another,  and  seek  not 
that  honour  which  comethfrom  God  alone  ?^ 

But  you  make  the  pride  of  man  the  cause 
of  his  behoving  divine  truths,  though  they  are 
as  opposite  to  one  another  as  avarice  and  hea- 
venlv-mindedness,  lio-ht  and  darkness. 

To  make  some  apology  for  yourself,  you 
say,  What  hurt  do  I  do  to  a  man,  if  I  make 
him  more  known  to  himself  than  he  was  be- 
fore ? 

You   should   have   put  the  question  thus : 
^  St  John  V.  44. 


76 


REMARKS    ON    THE 


What  hurt  do  I  do  to  a  man,  if  I  make  him 

more  vicious  than  he  was  before,  if  I  deprave 

his  understanding,  and  lead  him  into  a  contempt 

!  and  dislilve  of  the  strongest  principles  of  rehgion? 

For  if  there  is  any  danger,  either  to  yourself 
or  others,  in  corrupting  their  minds,  and  de- 
stroying the  motives  to  religion  and  virtue,  you 
are  capable  of  no  other  apology  but  what  that 
being  may  make  who  goeth  about  as  a  roaring 
lion,  seeking  whom  he  may  devour. 

The  arrow  that  flieth  by  day,  and  the  pes- 
tilence that  walketh  in  darkness,  are  mere 
blessings,  if  compared  to  the  man  who  infuses 
vicious  opinions  into  the  mind,  which  weakens 
the  power  of  religion,  and  make  men  less  de- 
voted to  the  worship  and  service  of  God. 

How  can  you  say  that  you  have  only  made 
man  more  known  to  himself,  by  teaching  him 
that  the  general  belief  of  the  soul's  immortality 
is  owing  to  a  desperate  love  of  flattery  ? 

Have  you  proved  that  he  does  not  know 
himself,  if  he  thinks  it  is  owing  to  any  other 
cause  ?  Have  you  so  much  as  attempted  to 
shew  that  it  can  have  no  other  foundation  ? 
that  it  is  not  founded  in  reason,  religion,  and 
the  attributes  of  God  ? 

But  proving  (I  recollect)  is  no  talent  of 
yours  ;  and  if  you  may  be  allowed  to  shine  in 
anything,  it  is  in  loose  insinuations,  positive 
assertions,  and  vain  conjectures. 


FABLE    OF    THE     REES.  77 

SECTION  V. 

You  come  now  to  give  us  a  taste  of  your 
skill  in  phraseology,  or  the  force  and  propriety 
of  words.  All  sorts  of  learnino-  seem  to  be  at 
your  service,  and  you  are  so  constant  to  your- 
self as  to  make  them  all  conspire  in  one  and 
the  same  design  against  religion. 

Hope,  being  a  word  of  great  consolation  in 
the  Christian  religion,  you  have  pitched  upon 
that  as  most  deserving  the  kind  assistance  of 
your  learned  hand. 

All  hope,  say  you,  includes  doubt ;  a  silver 
inkhorn  may  jyass  in  speech,  because  every 
body  knows  what  ive  mean  by  it,  but  a  cer- 
tain hope  cannot.  The  epithet  destroys  the 
essence  of  the  substantive ;  it  is  palpable  non- 
sense. The  reason  therefore  why  it  is  not  so 
shocking  to  some,  to  hear  a  man  speak  of 
certain  hope,  as  if  he  should  talk  of  hot  ice, 
or  hquid  oak,  is  not  because  there  is  less  non- 
sense contained  in  the  first  than  in  either  of 
the  latter,  but  because  the  word  hope,  /  mean 
the  essence  of  it,  is  not  so  clearly  understood 
by  the  generality  of  the  people,  as  the  luords 
and  essences  of  ice  and  oak  are^. 

What  a  triumph  is  here  over  religion !  and 
with  how  much  ease  do  you  reject  an  article  of 
faith  with  a  noun  substantive  I 
'  p.  140. 


78  REMARKS    ON    THE 

In  our  burial  service  we  have  these  words, 
In  sure  and  certain  hope  of  a  resurrection,  &;c. 

This  it  seems  cannot  pass  in  speech,  with- 
out the  destruction  of  a  substantive ;  it  is 
shoching,  and  palpable  nonsense. 

Let  it  first  be  observed,  that  1iop)e  impHes 
the  belief,  dependence,  or  expectation  of  some- 
thing that  shall  come  to  pass.  JN'ow  I  should 
think  that  a  thing  may  as  well  be  expected 
with  certainty,  as  uncertainty  ;  and  that  its 
being  certain  to  happen,  is  no  inconsistency  in 
the  expression.  It  can  hardly  be  denied  but 
that  a  man  may  be  certain  that  some  things 
will  never  happen ;  and  where  is  the  contra- 
diction of  supposing  him  as  certain  that  some 
tilings  will  happen  ? 

But  to  come  to  your  own  arguments. 

All  hope,  say  you,  includes  doubt.  This 
as  much  contradicts  my  understanding  as  if 
you  had  said  that  all  trust  includes  diffidence ; 
and  I  cannot  trust  a  man,  unless  I  distrust 
him.  The  apostle  says,  by  hope  we  are  saved; 
according  to  you,  he  must  mean,  by  doubting 
Ave  are  saved ;  for  if  hop>e  necessarily  includes 
doubting,  and  hoj^e  be  necessary  to  salvation,  it 
evidently  follows,  that  doubting  is  necessary  to 
salvation ;  and  every  exhortation  to  hope  in 
God,  is  an  exhortation  to  doidyt  of  God. 

Our  blessed  Saviour  said,  If  ye  have  faith, 
and  doubt  not,  &c.    Now  had  you  been  present 


FA  RLE    OF    THE     BEES.  79 

at  this  saying,  you  could  have  shewn  the  im- 
possibihty  of  what  he  exhorted  them  to ;  that 
faith  or  hoj^e  imphed  doubting ;  and  that  to 
talk  of  certain  hope  or  faith,  was  as  shocking 
to  a  fine  understanding  as  to  talk  of  hot  ice 
or  liquid  oak. 

Certain  hope,  you  say,  is  palpable  non- 
sense, because  the  ep)ithet  destroys  the  essence 
of  the  substantive. 

So  that  doubting  is  the  essence  of  hope, 
and  consequently  whatever  else  belongs  to  hope  is 
only  accidental;  the  essence  of  hope  is  doubting. 

Now  if  doubting  is  the  essence  of  hope, 
then  where  there  is  the  most  doubting  there 
must  be  the  most  of  hope ;  for  where  there  is 
most  of  the  essence  of  a  thing,  there  must  neces- 
sarily be  most  of  the  thing  itself. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  as  ridiculous  to  make 
doubting  the  essence  of  hope,  as  to  make  fear 
the  essence  of  courage.  For  hope,  so  fiir  as  it 
goes,  as  much  excludes  doubting  as  courage,  so 
far  as  it  extends,  banishes  fear.  There  may  be 
a  weak  hope  which  is  mixed  with  doubt,  as  there 
may  be  a  half  courage  that  is  attended  with 
fear  ;  but  a  thorough  hope  as  truly  rejects  doubt, 
as  a  perfect  courage  shakes  oif  all  fear.  And  it 
is  just  such  shocking  nonsense  to  talk  of  a  cer- 
tain hope  as  to  speak  of  a  fearless  courage  : 
and  there  is  just  as  much  murder  of  the  sub- 
stantive in  one  case  as  the  other. 


vr- 


80  REMARKS    ON    THE 

Hope,  or  expectation,  does  not  imply  uncer- 
tainty, but  futurity,  that  the  things  expected  are 
not  in  being,  but  are  to  come  to  pass ;    this  is 
atl  that  is  of  the  essence  of  hope  ;  it  is  only  the 
futurity  of  things  that  makes  it. 

Let  the  things  come  to  pass,  and  the  hope 
ceases,  this  is  the  only  way  of  destroying  it. 
But  whether  the  things  to  come  be  with  cer- 
tainty or  uncertainty  expected,  no  more  destroys 
-that  disposition  of  mind,  which  is  called  hope, 
than  the  passion  of  fear  is  destroyed  by  exert- 
ing itself  reasonably  or  unreasonably. 

Hope  is  uncertain,  not  because  we  cannot 
hope  or  expect  with  certainty,  but  because  the 
things  we  hope  for  are  generally  not  in  our 
power,  so  as  we  can  be  secure  of  the  event. 

But  you  ridiculously  suppose,  that  hope,  or 
expectation,  as  a  faculty  of  the  mind  neces- 
sarily includes  uncertainty,  as  if  a  man  cannot 
expect  or  hope  for  that  which  he  is  sure  will 
answer  his  expectation ;  or  that  he  must  cease 
to  expect  things,  because  he  has  certain  grounds 
to  expect  them.  These  are  the  absurdities 
which  you  plunge  into,  rather  than  allow  a 
certain  hope  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead. 

Hope  is  as  the  things  hoped  for.  In  uncertain 
things  it  is  uncertain.  But  if  God  is  pleased  to 
inform  us  of  things  to  come,  we  are  with  certain 
hope  and  expectation  to  depend  upon  them. 

Agreeable  to  this,  St  Paul  says,  In  hope  of 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  81 

eternal  life,  luhich  God,  that  cannot  lie,  pro- 
mised before  the  luorld  began. 

Here  we  have  an  apostle's  authority  for  a 
certain  hope,  made  as  undeniable  as  the  veracity 
of  God. 

But  this  must  be  very  shocking  to  a  gentle- 
man of  your  refined  understanding,  and  must 
give  you  a  further  uneasiness,  to  behold  the 
destruction  of  a  whole  noun  substantive  to 
establish  only  an  article  of  rehgion. 

You  compare  certain  hoi^e  to  hot  ice,  or 
liquid  oak,  and  say,  that  the  expressions  would 
be  equally  shocking  were  the  nature  of  hope 
as  well  understood  as  the  nature  of  ice  and 
oak. 

Had  you  not  been  used  to  understand  every 
thing  wrong,  you  had  never  made  this  obser- 
vation ;  for  the  contrary  to  this  happens  to  be 
true,  that  the  expression  is  not  so  shocking  in 
one  case  as  the  other,  because  the  nature  of 
hope  is  as  well  understood  as  that  of  ice,  &c. 

It  is  not  shocking  to  say  certain  hope,  be- 
cause hope  is  known  to  be  founded  upon  some 
degrees  of  assurance. 

But  does  ice  suppose  some  degrees  of  heat 
in  order  to  its  existence?  Is  ice  hotter  or 
colder,  as  hope  is  more  or  less  assured  ?  Hope 
is  stronger  and  better  the  more  it  has  of  assur- 
ance, and  the  less  it  is  opposed  with  doubts  ; 
but  is  ice  the  stronger  and  harder  the  more  it 


82  -  REMARKS    ON    THE 

has  of  heat,  or  the  less  it  is  surrounded  with 
cold? 

Your  comparison  also  of  certain  hope  to 
liquid  oak  is  equally  ingenious  and  worthy  of 
yourself;  for  it  supposes  that  an  oak  changes 
from  solid  to  liquid,  as  hope  fluctuates  from 
doubts  to  belief.  For  were  not  an  oak  as 
various  in  its  nature,  as  to  liquid  and  solid,  as 
hojye  is  various  in  its  nature,  as  to  doubt  and 
assurance,  it  must  be  shocking  nonsense  to 
make  a  liquid  oak  the  same  thing  as  an  as- 
.nired  hope. 

I  have  been  the  longer  upon  this  point, 
l)ecause  it  is  levelled  at  the  very  foundation  of 
our  religion,  and  would  teach  people  to  doubt 
of  its  greatest  articles,  through  the  mere  force 
of  a  word  or  two,  and  for  the  sake  of  a  noun 
substantive. 


SECTION  VI. 


I  HAD  now  taken  my  leave  of  you,  if  the 
letter  you  published  in  the  London  Journal,  in 
defence  of  your  book,  had  not  been  just  put 
into  my  hands. 

Having  seen  your  talent  at  apology,  I  ex- 
pected no  great  matter  from  you  in  that  way ; 
but,  however,  I  am  now  convinced  that  your 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  83 

book  gives  us  but  a  small  essay  of  your  abilities, 
and  that  you  can  exceed  it  as  much  as  you 
please. 

For  who  would  imagine  that  the  author  of 
so  poor  a  rhapsody  could  produce  such  masterly 
strokes  as  these  in  the  defence  of  it  ? 

''My  vanity,''  say  you,  ''  I  never  could  con- 
quer so  luell  as  I  could  wish,  and  I  am  too 
proud  to  commit  crimes^ 

Surely  no  one  after  this  will  venture  to  lay 
any  thing  to  your  charge,  since  great  must  be 
your  innocence  if  pride  be  the  guardian  of  it. 

But  if  any  one  should  chance  to  humble 
you,  you  must  then  fall  into  a  defenceless  state. 
But  if  you  are  not  to  be  proved  guilty  till  you 
can  be  shewn  to  be  deficient  in  pride,  it  may 
require  some  time  to  effect  it. 

Since  you  ground  your  vindication  so  much 
upon  your  pride,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  re- 
collect the  definition  you  have  given  us  of  it  in 
your  own  book.  Pride,  say  you,  is  that 
natural  faculty  by  which  every  mortal  that 
has  any  understanding  overvalues  and  im- 
agines better  things  of  himself  than  any  im- 
partial judge,  thoroughly  acquainted  luith  all 
his  qualities  and  circumstances,  would  allow 
him^. 

A  pretty  qualification  indeed  for  a  man  to 
found  his  innocence  upon  !     Yet  you  (with  a 

1  p.  125. 

G— 2 


84  REMARKS    ON    THE 

more  than  ordinary  brightness)  own  that  you 
are  governed  by  this  vice,  to  prove  yourself  to 
be  faultless. 

Should  a  blind  man,  who  had  lost  his  way, 
allege  his  blindness  as  a  proof  that  he  could  not 
lose  it,  he  would  shew  that  he  was  just  as  well 
acquainted  with  the  advantages  of  blindness  as 
you  are  with  the  effects  of  pride. 

The  next  ingenious  step  that  you  take  is 
this  :  The  Fable  of  the  Bees,  say  you,  luas  de- 
signed for  the  entertainment  of  ])eo'ple  of  know- 
ledge and  education.  It  is  a  book  of  severe 
and  exalted  morality,  that  contains  a  strict 
test  of  virtue. 

Had  you  said  that  the  author  was  a  sera- 
phim, and  that  he  never  was  any  nearer  the 
earth  than  the  fixed  stars,  I  should  have  thought 
you  in  as  sober  a  way  as  you  now  appear  to 
be  in. 

That  you  intended  it  for  the  entertainment 
of  people  of  knowledge  and  education,  is  what 
I  cannot  say  is  false ;  for  if  your  pride  is  such 
as  you  assert,  you  may  be  capable  of  intending 
anything  ;  I  know  of  nothing  too  monstrous 
for  you  to  go  about. 

But  if  you  can  believe  that  you  have  wrote 
a  book  of  severe  and  exalted  morality,  you 
must  not  laugh  at  those  who  believed  stocks  and 
stones  to  be  objects  of  worship,  or  took  a  leek 
or  an  onion  to  be  a  deity. 


FABLE    OF    THE     BEES.  85 

You  are  liappy  in  this,  that  you  have  made 
an  assertion  which  an  adversary  cannot  further 
expose,  because  there  is  no  superior  degree  of 
extravagance  to  which  it  can  be  compared. 

For  if  a  person  will  write  a  book  to  prove 
that  man  is  a  mere  animal,  and  that  moral 
virtue  is  the  political  offspring  which  flattery 
begot  upon  pride,  and  then  call  it  a  book  of 
severe  and  exalted  morality,  he  has  this  satis- 
faction, that  no  skill  can  aggravate  his  nonsense. 

Such  as  it  is,  you  say,  you  are  satisfied  it 
has  diverted  2^^'^sons  of  great  probity  and 
virtue. 

Pray,  sir,  how  does  this  appear?  Where 
do  you  find  these  ipeoiple  of  great  virtue,^  When 
you  wrote  your  book  you  knew  of  no  such 
4)eople.  Virtue  was  then  nowhere  to  be  found ; 
for  you  tell  us,  that  having  in  vain  sought  for 
it  in  the  world,  you  at  last  went  to  the  convents, 
but  even  there  it  had  no  existence.  But  now, 
it  seems,  rather  than  want  an  apology,  you  will 
suppose  even  what  confutes  your  book,  and  what 
you  most  hate,  that  there  is  such  a  being  as  a 
man  of  great  virtue. 

I  lay  it  down,  you  add,  as  a  first  principle, 
that  in  all  societies,  great  or  small,  it  is  the 
duty  of  every  member  of  it  to  be  good ;  that 
virtue  ought  to  be  encouraged,  vice  discounte- 
nanced, the  laws  obeyed,  and  the  transgressors 
punished ;    and  then  you  say  there  is  not  a 


86  REMARKS    ON    THE 

line  in  the  whole   hook  that  contradicts  this 
doctrine. 

This  comes  so  oddly  from  you,  that  it  need 
not  be  exposed  to  the  reader  ;  if  you  had  in- 
tended it  as  a  public  recantation  of  all  that  you 
had  dehvered  before,  there  had  been  something 
in  it ;  but  to  say  that  there  is  not  a  line  in 
your  book  that  contradicts  this,  is  trusting  too 
much  to  the  weakness  of  your  readers  :  for, 
can  you  pretend  to  have  sl  first  principle,  or  to 
talk  of  duty  or  virtue,  after  you  have  declared 
that  the  moral  virtues  are  all  a  cheat,  by  making 
them  the  political  offspring  which  flattery  be- 
got upon  pride  ? 

Can  you  recommend  goodness,  who  have 
compared  the  pidchrum  and  honestum  in  ac- 
tions to  the  whimsical  distinctions  of  floiuers, 
and  made  the  difference  between  good  and  evil 
as  fanciful  as  the  difference  between  a  tulip  and 
an  auricida. 

When  therefore  you  pretend  to  lay  it  down 
as  a  first  principle,  that  it  is  the  duty  of  every 
man  to  be  good,  &c. :  it  amounts  to  as  much  as 
if  you  had  said,  having  shewn  that  there  is 
nothing  but  fancy  in  the  preference  of  floAvers, 
/  lay  it  down  as  a  first  principle,  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  every  man  to  admire  the  tulip 
above  all  other  flowers ;  that  the  love  of  tulips 
ought  to  be  encouraged,  and  that  of  auriculas 
discountenanced,  &c. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  87 

But  however,  lest  any  of  your  readers 
should  imagine  that  you  meant  something  more 
than  this,  and  to  clear  yourself  from  all  sus- 
picion of  gravity  or  seriousness  in  your  recom- 
mendation of  virtue  and  goodness,  you  immedi- 
ately add  this  explication  of  yourself. 

Would  you  banish  fraud  and  luxury,  j^re- 
vent  profaneness  and  irreligion,  and  make  the 
generality  of  the  people  charitable,  good,  and 
virtuous ;     break    doivn    the   2J7^inting-pr esses, 
melt  the  founts,  and  burn  all  the  books  in  the 
island;  knock  doiun  foreign  trade, prohibit  all 
commerce  with  strangers,  and  permit  no  ships 
to  go  to  sea ;  restore  to  the  clergy,  the  king, 
and  the  barons,  their  ancient  privileges,  pre- 
rogatives, and  possessions ;  build  new  churches, 
and  convert  all  the  coin  you  can  come  at  into 
sacred  utensils;    erect  monasteries  and  alms- 
houses in  abundance,   and  let    no  parish    be 
luithout     a    charity-school;      let     the     clergy 
preach  abstinence  and  self-denial  toothers,  and 
take  what  liberty  they  please  for  themselves ; 
let  no   man   be  made    lord   treasurer    but    a 
bishoj).     By  such  pious  endeavours  and  luhole- 
some  regulations    the  scene  would  soon  be  al- 
tered.     Such  a  change    would    influence    the 
manners  of  the  nation,  and  render  them  tem- 
2)erate,  honest,  and  sincere ;  and  from  the  next 
generation  we  might  reasonably  expect  a  harm- 
less, innocent,  and  well-meaning  people,   that 


88  REMARKS    ON    THE 

luould  never  dispute  the  doctrine  of  passive 
obedience,  nor  any  other  orthodox  principles, 
hut  he  suhmissive  to  superiors,  and  unanimous 
in  religious  ivorship^. 

It  must  be  owned  that  you  never  so  much 
exceeded  yourself  as  in  this  flight  of  your 
oratory.  And  had  your  teeming  imagination 
been  able  to  have  produced  one  more  evil  or 
folly,  it  had  been  added  to  the  lovely  idea  you 
have  formed  of  a  people  intending  to  live  like 
Christians. 

He  that  can  now  suspect  you  guilty  of  one 
sober  thought  in  relation  to  religion  or  mora- 
lity, must  be  acknowledged  to  be  very  senseless. 

For,  mention  your  regard  to  rehgion  or 
virtue  as  often  as  you  please,  you  have  here 
taken  care  to  assure  us,  that  you  wish  their 
prosperity  as  heartily  as  you  wish  to  see  the 
kingdom  full  of  monasteries,  and  all  our  money 
converted  into  sacred  utensils. 

But  I  beg  pardon  for  supposing  that  what 
you  have  so  clearly  said  to  shew  your  ab- 
horrence of  religion,  and  contempt  of  virtue, 
needs  any  illustration. 

But  to  carry  on  the  hanter,  you  still  add, 
^^  If  I  have  shewn  the  way  to  luorldly  great- 
ness, I  have  always  without  hesitation  p7^ef  erred 
the  road  that  leads  to  virtue." 

Had  there  been  one  instance  of  this  kind 
1  p.  253. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  89 

in  your  book,  I  suppose  you  would  have  re- 
ferred us  to  it.  But  enough  has  been  already 
observed  to  shew  what  virtue  implies  in  your 
system.  I  shall  however  produce  one  passage  to 
shew  how  you  always,  and  without  hesitation, 
'prefer  the  road  that  leads  to  virtue. 

Spealdng  of  lust,  you  say,  "  The  artful 
moralists  have  taught  us  cheerfully  to  subdue 
it."  And  then  you  cry  out,  "  Oh  1  the  mighty 
prize  we  have  in  view  for  all  our  self-denial ! 
Can  any  man  he  so  serious  as  to  abstain  from 
laughter,  ivhen  he  considers  that  for  so  much 
deceit  and  insincerity  practised  upo7i  ourselves 
a>s  luell  as  others,  lue  have  no  other  recompence 
than  the  vain  satisfaction  of  making  our 
species  appear  more  exalted,  and  remote  from 
that  of  other  animals  than  it  really  is,  and 
we  in  our  otun  consciences  know  it  to  6e^." 

Thus  it  is  that  without  hesitation  you  give 
your  approbation  of  virtue ;  you  make  the  mo- 
deration of  our  passions  to  be  even  a  sin  against 
our  own  consciences,  as  acting  deceitfully,  con- 
trary to  what  we  know  becomes  us. 

You  make  self-denial,  or  any  restraints 
which  distinguish  us  from  brutes,  to  be  so  ridi- 
culous a  thing  as  ought  to  excite  the  laughter 
and  contempt  of  every  creature. 

Thus  is  your  prostitute  pen  wantonly  cm- 
ployed  to  put  out,  as  far  as  you  can,  the  hght 

»  p.  157. 


.00  ,  REMARKS    ON    THE 

of  reason  and  religion,  and  deliver  up  mankind 
to  sensuality  and  vileness. 

Should  I  now  lament  the  miserable  fruits  of 

free-thinking,  which  thus  tend  not  only  to  set 

us  loose   from  the  regards   of  religion,  but  to 

destroy  whatever  is  reasonable,  decent,  or  comely 

in  human  nature,  though  as  a  friend  of  religion 

I  might  be  censured  by  some,  yet  surely  as  an 

advocate   for   the  dignity  of  man  I  might  be 

pardoned  by  all. 

I         But  it  is  our  peculiar  unhappiness  as  clergy- 

i  men,  that  if  we   sit  loose  to  the  duties  of  re- 

I  ligion,  we    are    doubly  reproached,  and   if  we 

firmly  assert  its  doctrines,  we  fall  under  as  great 

I  condemnation. 

In  all  other  causes  a  man  is  better  received, 
because  it  is  his  proper  business  to  appear,  yet 
that  which  should  recommend  our  pleading, 
happens  to  make  them  less  regarded ;  we  are 
worse  heard  because  God  has  made  it  our  duty 
to  speak. 

But  I  wave  this  topic ;  for  if,  when  we 
assert  the  common  doctrines  of  Christianity,  we 
are  thought  too  much  interested,  we  shall  hardly 
be  reckoned  less  selfish  when  we  plead  for  com- 
mon equity  towards  ourselves. 

You  have  therefore  picked  out  a  right  body 
of  men  to  ridicule,  and  your  manner  of  doing 
it  shews  you  knew  that  no  want  of  wit  would 
make  you  less  successful. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  91 

We  often  suffer  from  porters  and  carmen, 
who  venture  to  be  smart  upon  us,  through  an 
assurance,  that  we  must  lose  by  replying.  A 
security  Uke  this  has  encouraged  you  to  be  very 
hberal  of  your  mirth,  and  such  mirth  as  might 
pass  for  dulness  upon  any  other  subject. 

I  will  not  say  how  infinite  your  wit  has 
been  upon  our  dress  and  habit,  or  what  uncom- 
mon vivacity  you  have  shewn  Aipon  the  heaver 
hat,  whether  new  or  old. 

Had  you  spared  our  majestic  gait,  slick 
faces  kept  constantly  shaved,  handsome  nails 
diligently  pared,  and  linen  transparently  cu- 
rious^, nothing  of  the  sublime  had  been  found 
in  your  book.  It  must  be  confessed  this  is  a 
heavy  charge  against  the  j)riesthood ;  but  we 
may  see  you  was  loth  to  enhance  it,  or  you 
might  have  mentioned  the  black  eyes,  the 
high  foreheads,  and  the  dimp)led  chins,  which 
may  be  proved  upon  several  of  them,  which 
they  shew  in  the  face  of  the  world  at  noon- 
day. 

But  since  I  have  charged  you  with  wit,  I 
do  not  think  it  fair  to  leave  you  under  so  gross 
an  accusation  without  something  to  support  your 
spirits.  Read  therefore  the  following  words  of 
the  most  excellent  Bruyere. 

Have  the   libertines,   says  he,   ivho   valve 
themselves  so  much  upon  the  title  of  wits,  have 
'  p.  135. 


92  REMARKS    ON    THE 

they  wit  enough  to  perceive  that  they  are  only 
called  so  by  irony  ? 

You  can  hardly  relish  anything  of  mine, 
after  this  taste  of  so  fine  a  writer,  I  shall  there- 
fore trouble  you  but  little  further. 

If  you  wonder  that  I  have  taken  no  notice 
of  the  dreadful  evils  you  charge  upon  charity- 
schools,  and  the  sad  effects  which  such  cate- 
chizing-houses  must  have  upon  a  kingdom  that 
is  both  Christian  and  Protestant,  I  must  tell 
you  that  I  purposely  avoided  it.  Some  things 
are  so  plain  that  it  is  yielding  too  much  to 
offer  to  defend  them. 

Christians,  I  hope,  will  have  so  much  com- 
mon sense  as  to  know  that  no  Christian  can  call 
such  houses  an  evil ;  and  as  to  complaints  from 
other  hands,  who  would  not  wish  that  the  ene- 
mies of  Christianity  may  have  every  day  more 
reason  to  complain  ? 

As  to  your  part,  they  will  observe,  that  in 
these  very  writings,  where  you  complain  of  the 
evil  of  charity-schools,  you  make  moral  virtue 
a  cheat,  the  offspring  oi  pride,  and  the  enquiry 
after  the  best  religion,  but  a  wild-goose  chase, 
A  very  worthy  person  indeed  to  talk  of  either 
good  or  evil! 

Whilst  we  can  preserve  but  the  very  name 
of  religion,  a  charitable  contribution  to  educate 
children  in  it  must  be  reckoned  amongst  our 
best  works. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  93 

Charity-schools  can  never  need  a  defence 
in  a  kingdom  that  boasts  of  having  the  scrip- 
tures in  the  vulgar  tongue.  For  if  it  be  our 
glory  and  happiness  to  have  the  Bible  in  Eng- 
lish, surely  it  must  be  in  some  degree  glorious 
to  teach  our  natives  how  to  read  it. 

You  say,  if  any  one  can  shew  the  least 
tittle  of  blasphemy  or  profaneness  in  your  book, 
or  anything  tending  to  immorality,  or  a  cor- 
ruption of  mamiers,  you  ivill  burn  it  yourself 
at  any  time  or  place  your  adversary  shall 
appoint.  I  appoint  the  first  time,  and  the 
most  public  place,  and  if  you  keep  your  word 
shall  be  your  humble  servant. 


POSTSCRIPT. 

Having  in  my  second  section  mentioned  Mr 
Bayle  as  the  principal  author  amongst  those 
whose  parts  have  been  employed  to  arraign  and 
expose  virtue  and  religion,  as  being  only  the 
blind  effects  of  complexion,  natural  temp)er,  and 
custom,  SiC: ;  it  may  not  be  improper  to  recom- 
mend to  his  admirers  the  following  instances  of 
that  gentleman's  great  j^e^ie^ra^io^i  and  clear- 
ness on  this  subject. 

Mr  Bayle  engaged  in  a  cause  where  he 
found  it  necessary  to  assert,   that  a  society  of 


94  .    REMARKS    ON    THE 

Atheists  might  be  as  virtuous  men  as  a  society 
of  other  people  professing  rehgion  ;  and  to  main- 
tain this  opinion,  he  was  farther  obhged  to  de- 
clare, that  religious  opinions  and  beliefs  had  no 
mfluence  at  all  upon  men's  actions. 

This  step  was  very  necessary  to  be  taken ; 
for  if  religious  opinions  or  beliefs  were  allowed 
to  have  any  influence  upon  our  actions,  then  it 
must  also  have  been  allowed,  that  a  society  of 
Atheists  must  have  been  less  virtuous  than  a 
society  of  people  holding  religious  opinions. 

Mr  Bayle  therefore  roundly  denied  that  re- 
ligious opinions  have  any  mfluence  upon  us,  and 
set  himself  to  prove  that  comjylexion,  natural  tem- 
per, custom,  &c.  are  the  only  causes  of  our  actions. 

Thus  he  says  he  is  persuaded  that  man  is 
that  kind  of  creature  luho,  with  all  his  boasted 
reason,  never  acts  by  the  principles  of  his  be- 
lief \  Again,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  man 
acts  continually  against  principles.  And  again, 
I  pretend  to  have  demonstrated  that  men  never 
act  by  p)rinciple. 

Mr  Bayle  has  often  diverted  himself  with 
the  unreasonableness  of  those  divines  who  first 
declare  the  sublimity  and  inconceivableness  of 
the  Christian  mysteries,  and  then  pretend  to  ex- 
plain them.  But  they  may  laugh  at  liim  in 
their  turn,  who  happens  to  be  as  weak  and  un- 
reasonable even  in  hh  philosophic  chair. 
^  Miscel.  Reflect. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  95 

For  he  can  give  it  you  out  as  an  undeniable 
maxim,  that  the  mind  of  man,  heing  subject  to 
infinite  caprice  and  variety^  no  rule  can  he 
laid  down  concerning  it  not  liable  to  a  thou- 
sand objections  ^ ;  and  then  tell  you  he  has  de- 
monstrated that  man  never  acts  by  principle. 
As  if  he  had  said,  I  give  you  here  a  certain 
and  infallible  rule  concerning  the  mind  of  man, 
not  liable  to  one  objection  ;  though  I  assure  you 
that  no  ride  can  be  laid  down  not  liable  to  a 
thousand  objections. 

Mr  Bayle,  to  shew  that  his  society  of 
Atheists  might  be  as  virtuous  as  other  men, 
affirms,  that  a  wicked  inclination  neither  arises 
from  our  ignorance  of  God''s  existence^  nor  is 
checked  by  the  knowledge  of  a  Supreme  Judge 
who  punishes  and  rewards.  And  that  an  in- 
clination to  evil  belongs  no  more  to  a  heart 
void  of  the  sense  of  God,  than  one  j^ossessed 
with  it,  and  that  one  is  under  no  looser  a  rein 
than  the  other^. 

With  how  much  reason  and  freedom  of 
mind  Mr  Bayle  asserts  this  may  be  seen  from 
what  he  says  in  other  places.  Thus,  in  his  His- 
torical Dictionary  he  can  tell  you,  that  there  is 
nothing  so  advantageous  to  man,  if  ive  consider 
either  the  mind  or  the  heart,  as  to  know  God 
rightly  \ 

He  can  commend  the  saying  of  Silius  ItaU- 
'^  Ibid.  p.  279.        '  Ibid.  p.  294.        *  Vol.  iv.  p.  2683. 


96  KEMARKS    ON    THE 

cus,  as  very  pertinently  spoken  of  the  Cartha- 
ginians:— Alas,  miserable  mortals!  your  igno- 
rance of  the  Divine  nature  is  the  original  cause 
of  your  crimes.  Again,  /  luill  not  deny  there 
have  been  pagans,  who,  making  the  utmost  use 
of  their  notion  of  the  Divine  nature,  have  ren- 
dered it  the  means  of  abating  the  violence  of 
their  passions^. 

These  contradictions  need  no  illustration ; 
I  shall  pass  on  to  shew  you  a  few  more  of  the 
same  kind. 

Mr  Bayle  affirms,  that  man  never  acts  by 
the  p^rinciples  of  his  belief  Yet  see  how  often 
he  teaches  the  contrary.  Speaking  of  the 
stange  opinions  and  practices  of  some  pagans, 
who,  though  loersuaded  of  a  providence,  denied 
nothing  to  their  lusts  and  passions ;  he  gives 
this  as  the  reason  of  their  conduct,  Either 
that  they  must  suppose  the  gods  approved  these 
ways,  or  else  that  one  need  not  trouble  one's  self 
whether  they  did  or  no^. 

See  here  tliis  elevated  free-thinker  assert- 
ing that  man  never  acts  by  his  belief,  and  yet 
making  it  necessary  that  the  pagans  must  have 
had  such  or  such  a  belief  or  else  they  could 
never  have  acted  as  they  did. 

Instances  of  this  kind  are  very  numerous. 
In  the  article  of  the   Sadducees,  he   says,  The 
good  life  of  the  Sadducees  might  have  been  an 
^  Miscel.  Reflect,  p.  294.  ^  Ibid,  p.  404. 


FABLE    OF    THE    BEES.  97 

(\ffect  of  their  believing  a  py^ovidence.  Again, 
the  orthodox  lu ill  feel  the  activity  of  that  im- 
pression as  luell  as  the  Sadducees,  and  heiny 
moreover  persuaded  of  a  future  state,  relirjion 
will  have  a  greater  influence  upon  their  lives'^. 

Here  a  belief  of  a  providence  in  this  world 
is  allowed  to  be  the  cause  of  a  fjood  life,  and  a 
persuasion  of  a  future  state  affirmed  to  have  a 
still  greater  influence  upon  our  lives ;  and  yet 
the  same  great  reasoner  demonstrates  that  men 
always  act  without  any  regard  to  their  beliefs 
or  persuasions. 

To  demonstrate  that  beliefs  and  opinions 
have  no  part  in  the  forming  our  lives,  Mr 
Bayle  appeals  to  the  lives  of  Christians ;  "  For, 
luere  it  otherivise,"  says  he,  ''hoiu  is  it  pyossible 
that  Cliristians,  so  clearly  instructed  from  re- 
velation supported  by  so  many  miracles,  that 
they  must  renounce  their  sins  in  order  to  be 
eternally  happy,  and  to  prevent  eternal  misery, 
should  yet  live  as  they  do,  in  the  most  enormous 
ivays  of  sin  and  disobedience?" 

This  is  Mr  Bayle's  invincible  demonstra- 
tion, that  beliefs  and  persuasions  have  no  effect 
upon  us,  and  that  man  never  acts  by  principle ; 
though  you  shall  see  that  he  can  as  well  de- 
monstrate the  contrary  to  this. 

In  the  article  of  Sommona-codom,  speaking 
of  this  doctrine,  viz.   That  an  old  sinner  who 

=*  Hist.  Diet. 
7 


98  REMARKS    ON    THE 

has  enjoyed  all  the  2^leasures  of  life  will  be 
eternally  hapjjy,  provided  he  truly  rejjents  on 
his  death-bed ;  he  makes  this  remark,  Doubt- 
less this  may  be  the  reason  luhy  the  fear  of 
God's  judgments,  w  the  hopes  of  his  rewards, 
make  no  great  impressions  upon  worldly 
people^. 

Here  you  see  this  learned  philosopher  urges 
the  lives  of  Christians  as  a  demonstration  that 
men  never  act  hj  persuasion;  and  yet  tells  you 
as  a  thing  j^ctst  all  doubt,  that  they  live  as  they  * 
do  through  a  p)ersuasion  that  a  death-bed  re- 
pentance will  set  all  right. 

Take  another  instance  of  the  same  kind. 
Religion  and  principle  have  no  effect  upon 
us :  This  must  be  the  case,  says  Mr  Bayle, 
"^or  the  ancient  j^c^yeins,  who  were  under  the 
yoke  of  numberless  superstitions,  continually 
employed  in  appeasing  the  anger  of  their 
idols,  awed  by  infinite  prodigies,  and  firmly 
persuaded  the  gods  dispensed  good  or  evil 
according  to  the  life  they  led,  had  been  re- 
strained f^om  all  the  abominable  crimes  they 
committed^.'' 

This  paragraph  is  to  shew  that  religious 
persuasions  have  no  effect  upon  us ;  because  if 
they  had,  the  j^&^snusions  of  the  pagans  must 
have  made  them  good  men. 

But  Mr  Bayle  here  forgets  that  he  himself 
'  Hist.  Diet.  2  Miscel.  Reflect,  p.  275. 


FABLE    OF    THE     BEES.  99 

lias  affirmed  that  the  'pacjan  religion  not 
only  taught  ridiculous  tilings,  hut  that  it  ivas 
besides  a  religion  authorizing  tlie  most  abomi- 
nable crimes^ ;  that  they  luere  led  to  their 
crimes  by  their  very  religion ;  that  it  must 
have  been  a  j)oint  of  faith  luith  them,  that  to 
make  themselves  imitators  of  God,  they  ought 
to  be  cheats,  envious,  fornicators,  adidterers. 

So  that  this  philosopher  shews,  with  great 
consistency,  that  the  religion  of  the  pagans 
enojao'ed  them  in  abominable  crimes,  and  that 
the  jyagans  did  not  act  by  their  rehgion,  because 
they  were  guilty  of  abominable  crimes. 

But  I  proceed  no  further  at  present;  this 
specimen  of  Mr  Bayle's  absurdities  and  con- 
tradictions on  this  very  article,  where  he  has 
been  most  admired,  may  suffice  to  shew  that  if 
he  has  gained  upon  men's  minds,  it  has  been 
by  other  arts  than  those  of  clear  reasonino-. 
I  would  not  by  this  insinuate  that  he  was  not 
a  man  of  fine  parts ;  Bellarmin's  absurdities, 
though  ever  so  many,  still  leave  room  to  ac- 
knowledge his  great  abilities.  This  seems  to 
have  been  Mr  Bayle's  case ;  he  was  no  Jesuit 
or  papist,  but  he  was  as  great  a  zealot  in  his 
way.  BcUarmin  contradicted  himself  for  the 
sake  of  mother  church ;  and  Mr  Bavle  con- 
tradicted  himself  as  heartily  for  the  sake  of  an 
imaginary  society,  a  society  of  Atheists. 

3  Ibid.  390. 

7—2 


100        REMARKS   ON   THE   FABLE   OF  THE   BEES. 

I  have  inserted  these  few  contradictory 
passages  for  the  sake  of  such  as  are  proselytes 
to  Mr  Bayle's  philosophy ;  let  them  here  see, 
that  in  following  him  they  only  leave  religion 
to  follow  blindness  and  bigotry  in  systems  of 
profaneness. 

When  clergymen  contradict  one  another, 
though  it  be  but  upon  a  ceremony  of  religion, 
infidels  make  great  advantage  of  it ;  for  irre- 
ligion,  having  no  arguments  of  its  own,  is  forced 
to  catch  at  every  foreign  objection. 

But  Mr  Bayle's  self-contradictions  upon 
the  chief  article  of  his  philosophy  may  perhaps 
not  lessen  his  authority  with  our  men  of  reason. 

For  whether  omy  freethinkers  are  not  such 
bigots  as  to  adore  Mr  Bayle's  contradictions  is 
what  I  will  not  presume  to  say. 

I  will  promise  for  nothing  but  their  little 
minds  and  blind  zeal  to  have  a  share  in  every 
error  that  can  give  offence  to  well-minded  men. 


LOAN  nrr»- 

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